Divine Strategies for Overcoming Cancel Culture

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network Now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. I'm going to be getting into this subject matter about how we overcome cancel culture. This is leading up to the release of my newest book, The Silencing of the Lambs, due out in early March. We'll tell you in a moment how you can still pre-order your signed numbered copy of the book, The Silencing of the Lambs, The Ominous Rise of Cancel Culture, and how we can overcome it. And while there are quite a few books now coming out on cancel culture, I believe you'll find this one unique.

I'm sure the others have value, but I believe you'll find this unique because it is filled with biblical strategies as to how we, as God's people, can overcome cancel culture. Now, I imagine, as I talk about some controversial issues today, some of you may want to weigh in and agree with me or disagree with me or challenge me on something. So, phone lines are open 866-348-7884. But I'm also opening the phone lines for all questions of all kinds on all subjects.

We had my friend, Dr. Mark Stangler, on with me this past Friday, and we took your health-related questions so you didn't get to call in with your random questions on Friday. So, today I will open the phones a little later in the broadcast, but now is a great time to call and get on the line of fire, get ready to get on the line of fire. Okay, a little later in the broadcast, I also want to touch briefly on the Ukraine-Russia situation. I am absolutely not an expert on world politics. Things that affect Israel directly, cultural issues within America and how that interfaces with politics, religious freedoms, those things I'm much more familiar with and can focus on, but I am absolutely not expert. I'm not giving you my evaluation or opinion on the situation.

Rather, I want you to hear from some others what some experts are saying, what the government is saying, and then at the very least, we can just pray intelligently because it's a critical situation. But first, cancel culture. Some of you are still not intimately familiar with what we're talking about when we say cancel culture. It's not that people disagree with each other forcefully.

That's fine. It's not that they say, well, I think your views are stupid. That's not the issue. The issue is canceling the views of others. So in the past or up to this day, you subscribe to something, right? You subscribe to a certain magazine and you don't want to get it anymore for whatever reason. So you cancel your subscription, right? Or let's say you subscribe to Netflix, but didn't like some of their programming and say, hey, I got to cut the ties with Netflix.

So I'm going to cancel my subscription to Netflix. Well, now it's people who are being canceled and people who are being censored to the point that you just try to remove them. You block their accounts. You disqualify them from having any voice. You fire them from their position and you seek to demonize them.

People are canceled and it's happening in epidemic levels today. And as we've said for years, the left and the radical agendas in our society always overplay their hand. And at a certain point, things go too far and people begin to push back. Now we as God's people, as sons of Issachar, spiritually speaking, who should understand the times and know what God's people should do. We who are called to be the salt and the light, we should not just be forever reacting to what's happening in the world around us. Rather, we should be moving forward. We should be saying, here's God's message.

Here's God's truth. And we are confronting the society, the culture, the world with that we are swimming against the tide. We are going against the grain. That's our lifestyle. So right now, Christian conservatives, followers of Jesus who hold to biblical values, they are at the top of the list of those being canceled.

They're the ones with the biggest target on their backs. So I want to declare to you from the word of God, truths from the word, not these exact words, but these truths. The church of Jesus cannot be canceled. We cannot be canceled. We cannot be blotted out. We cannot be ultimately silenced. The more you kill us, the more we rise up with a message.

The more you cancel us, the more we shout out the word. What is meant to be an obstacle becomes an opportunity if we walk with the Lord and if we fight spiritual battles spiritually rather than in the natural, because this is ultimately for us a spiritual battle. And Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10 that we live in this world or in the flesh, meaning in these physical bodies in this physical world, but we don't fight the way the world fights or with fleshly weapons.

Rather, the weapons we have have divine power to demolish strongholds. So we come with a message that is better than the message of the world. We come with a message that is different than the message of the world. And our message is filled with divine truth. So we, as God's people, overcome evil with good. We overcome hatred with love. We overcome the intimidation of the flesh with the power of the Spirit. We overcome lies with truth.

That's how we fight our weapons, friends. And again, the silencing of the lambs filled with divine strategies, whether you're a parent, whether you're a professor, whether it's someone that's come out of homosexuality and you're an ex-gay, whether you're a student on a campus, there are strategies for you. Whether you're a preacher of the Gospel, there are divine strategies. So go to AskDrBrown.org. Pre-order. It's a beautiful hardcover with a striking cover. Silencing the Lambs, AskDrBrown.org.

You'll see it right on the homepage. And we're going to sign each one as we always say we. I will. I've got someone helping me hand me the books.

That's why I say we so I can sign them and go next because we'll have stacks to do. It's a joy and a privilege. Put a scripture verse. I'm still thinking about what's the right verse to put in there. And okay, quick confession. Then I got some jarring quotes for you. In a little while, I'm going to go to the phones. And I'm going to focus on one particular strategy that I really open up in the Silencing of the Lambs.

Okay, first I've got a confession to make. Decades ago, as we were selling one house, moving into another house, when you're doing it in New York, lawyer's fees are way, way, way higher than in some other parts of the country. And it seems you have even more stacks of forms to sign. So the more I sign and sign and sign and sign, it's like, and my signature is just getting more like, almost like, you know, the last name Brown was always like a B and just a line. Then as I was doing more and more book signings in the years that followed and you could be sitting there, you know, for a long time signing books, my signature began to degenerate more and then just became something that just, it was, it was me signing and the way I signed, but didn't really look, it did look like Michael L. Brown or Michael Brown, just like one kind of, but that's, when I sign, that's just how it comes out. And I've done it like that for many, many years and signed thousands and thousands and thousands of books like that.

And when I try to write Michael L., it like, it doesn't come out right. It looks like a child writing. So I was teaching in Dallas at Christ for the Nations last week and the, one of the leaders of the school held up the book Revival or We Die that students were asked to read as I was teaching on revival. And it's the book that I had signed for him. And when I saw my signature in the front of the book, so not signing one after another, it almost looked like, you know, a caricature of a face, like you just draw a face from the side. It almost looked like a drawing of something rather than a signature. So we're going to see how it goes, but I'm going to try to practice getting a semi-normal signature back to get ready for the next book, but we shall see.

Okay. Barry Weiss was a New York Times columnist. She has been characterized as a liberal feminist and she is quote, married to her female partner.

She ultimately had to leave the New York Times because the atmosphere was so toxic. And if she would challenge the status quo as a liberal feminist lesbian millennial, I believe if she challenged the status quo, that's it. You're a bigot, you're a hater, you're racist. So look at what Barry Weiss said, my own forays into wrong thing.

In other words, when you think differently than the group have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues, meaning at the liberal New York Times who disagree with my views, they have called me a Nazi and a racist. We're used to criticism. She said, criticism is kosher in the work that we do.

Criticism is great. What cancel culture is about is not criticism. It is about punishment.

It is about making a person radioactive. It is about taking away their job. Of course, this quote and many others are in the silencing of the lambs. She said this, it is not just about punishing the center. It is not just about punishing the person for being insufficiently pure, obviously in the eyes of the others. It's about this sort of secondary boycott of people who would deign to speak to that person or appear on a platform with that person. And we see just very obviously where that kind of politics gets us.

If conversation with people that we disagree with becomes impossible, what is the way that we solve conflict? It's violence. And here, a societal violence, a social violence.

She even called it social murder. And it's what I see with hyper critics in the church, that it's guilt by association. Well, you were at a conference with and at the conference there were 20 speakers and one of those speakers was this person and this person three years ago put out something we consider heretical. Therefore, you're heretical unless you're where they come from. But this is even more extreme as the world is doing it. So what they consider to be pure and right and a lot of the social wokeness comes from white intellectual elites and they're offended for the black community where the black community isn't offended. They're offended for the Native American community where the Native American community isn't offended.

It's just this woke ideology. And if you don't play by their rule book, you're canceled. Okay, we come back. I'm going to talk to you about how to overcome that and then we're going to your calls. 866-348-7884. Let's together resist the words of darkness with the power of the gospel of light. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. New edition of my very first book and you'll find it super relevant. Compassionate Father or consuming fire, engaging the God of the Old Testament.

Is the God of the Old Testament the same as the God of the New Testament? What do we do with all the verses where God smites and destroys? It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. A divine strategy to overcome cancel culture that is super effective on every level. Just a little bit more about cancel culture and then we go there.

Nick Cave, Australian singer-songwriter, I have all his quotes as well, these relevant quotes in The Silencing of the Lambs. Listen to what he said. It's not coming from a Christian perspective as far as I know. He said, as far as I can see, cancel culture is mercy's antithesis.

In other words, the exact opposite of mercy. Political correctness has grown to become the unhappiest religion in the world. This once honorable attempt to reimagine our society in a more equitable way. In other words, you don't want to insult and put groups down. You want to have things equal.

That was the goal. Now embodies all the worst aspects that religion has to offer, by which I take them to mean you can't do this, you can't do this, this is wrong, this is wrong, silence here, silence there, and none of the beauty. He said, moral certainty and self-righteousness sure and even of the capacity for redemption.

It has become quite literally bad religion run amok. And he says this, cancel culture's refusal to engage with uncomfortable ideas has an asphyxiating effect on the creative soul of a societal. Can I end that quote there and go to what Dr. Martin Luther King said. Dr. King said this, here then is the Christian weapon against social evil. We are to go out with the spirit of forgiveness, heal the hurts, right the wrongs, and change society with forgiveness. Oh, think of what Nick Cave said friends, cancel culture is mercy's antithesis.

It is the exact opposite of mercy. So what we offer and how we overcome cancel culture, remember we overcome evil with good, we overcome hatred with love, we overcome cancel culture with a message of redemption and forgiveness. But we offer what the PC woke culture is not offering now. We offer something new and different which is based on the way Jesus forgave us. Now think of this, Colossians 3 Paul writes to the believers there and says that we are to forgive others the way Jesus forgave us. Not just meaning that he forgave us, we forgive, but how did he forgive and how did he love him?

He said this is my command that you love one another as I have loved you. Now I've got to be totally candid. If you look at our social media pages as believers, especially during the last election cycle, we were as nasty as anybody. We were as angry as anybody. We were as unredemptive as anybody. We were in our own camps as much as anybody. Maybe we didn't have all the profanity and stuff on other social media pages, but we were going after each other. Not just an honest, candid conversation with friends having differences. We just became enemies. I mean attacking different sides. Whatever side you're on, things got so volatile.

One night I was just weeping, talking and dancing like these are some of our friends and so politicized and junk being repeated, slandered. It is so contrary to who God wants us to be. So contrary to the way that God made us. So contrary to what he called us to represent. And we must be known as the community of redemption. We must be known as the people who show mercy. We must be known as the people who demonstrate the love people we hold to our standards. We have our views. We're always going to be slandered and called haters. We're always going to have people speaking against us and attacking us in different ways.

But if you cut us, we bleed love. I remember, I remember that a fellow came to our church, Fire Church, my home congregation. We helped plant many years ago with our school and our missions organization.

So we've got a small congregation in Concord, North Carolina. And a fellow came in one Sunday. He was dressed all in black. He had black nail polish, black eye makeup. So he was really overdoing.

He told us afterwards he was overdoing it. And he claimed to be a Satanist, if I recall. And he was a young person, maybe an older teenager, somewhere around there, maybe 20ish or something. But started talking to our young people, students in our ministry school, grads from our school, young people from the church.

Started talking with them. They befriended him. And he started coming regularly. And after a few weeks, I don't know what ultimately happened to him.

I'm not at our services a lot. I don't know what ultimately happened to him. But at a certain point, he said, I want you to know what happened here. He said, I go to different churches to see how they react towards me.

And I kind of overdid it coming in here, you know, to be as like dark looking and strange looking as possible. And people just showed him love and just reached out to him. That's what happened to me when I got saved. And my friends, you know, hippies, radicals, rebels full of sin and just stupid, angry and drug abusing and living foul lives. And these older people in church, you know, us 16, some of them in their 40s, some of them in their 60s, I mean, really old, right?

That's how it looked to me. They just loved on me. And they loved on my friends. And when I blew it as a new believer, just stupidly blew it in certain ways, got angry, threatened, whatever, just stupid stuff with my temper.

They just kept loving on me. When I went to apologize, God just smiled at me like, hey, you're right, man, you're brand new. And that was life transforming. If I had been met with something else, I don't know where I'd be today. So this is how it's a divine strategy. It's powerful. And back to what Dr. King said, I'm going to talk really candidly to you and then we're going to go to the phone.

So if you differ with me, have at it. Through most of American history, at least in parts of America, we have had institutionalized racism for most of our history, either with slavery or the dehumanizing of African Americans or segregation or laws put in place that most of us don't even know about that would give a disadvantage to African Americans and an advantage to white Americans or others. So this is through most of our history in at least some parts of America. Now, even though so much was done and civil rights acts in 64 and ongoing efforts to level the playing field as much as possible, you can't guarantee equal results, equal outcomes, but you try to level the playing field to give equal opportunities as much as we can on a systemic level, on a societal level. Obviously there's still going to be inequalities and inequities. So I'm all for addressing these. No, I don't believe there's systemic racism in America the way many would put it, but certainly there is the residue of the past and the residue of past laws and things that affect over generations, right? Where one group had it worse over generations and other groups had it better.

And because of that, it's still not level equal. So I understand that. One of my, one of my friends, African American friend said to me once, he said, there's not a racist bone in your body, but there's a lot you don't know.

Great. And there's a lot each of us don't know in different areas. So we educate each other, right? Like my book, our hands are stained with blood, which tells the tragic story of the church and the Jewish people. It talks about antisemitism in church history. Most Christians are unaware of that history. They read the book, it's eye-opening, it's painful, but it's true.

So others enlighten us to other things we may not be fully aware of, right? Like, like I didn't know years and years and years back that the Southern Baptists were formed to break away from the Northern Baptists because they wanted to keep their slaves. I didn't know that. And founders of Southern Baptist Seminary, most of them slave owners were approving of slavery, et cetera.

So I didn't know that. So when you hear it, okay, well, what are the results of that today? If this has been renounced, if this has been apologized for, are there remnants of it? I'm all for having that discussion. But unless there's a spirit of forgiveness, there will be no, no real lasting progress. That's what Dr. King said.

Here then is the Christian weapon against social evil. We're to go out with the spirit of forgiveness, heal the hurts, right the wrongs, and change society with forgiveness. There were people who said, we blew it. We messed up. We're truly sorry. And we want to work with you to make things right. But you extend forgiveness. And if your own heart is caught up with bitterness, even if someone hasn't asked you for forgiveness, you forgive from the heart. They're not right with God and in right relationship with you until they receive forgiveness from God and until they turn away from sin. But you clear your own heart. If you've been hurt personally and you want to get that person back, I want vengeance, which is different than Lord, I've forgiven them, but I do believe there should be justice. I believe this person is dangerous and should be in jail.

That's just that that's separate from I want to get them. I want to, I want to see them suffer. That spirit eats away at us. So if there's unforgiveness in your heart, talking brother to brother, sister to sister, family relationships, larger things having to do with American history. If in fact friends there's unforgiveness, it's deadly. It hurts you as much as it hurts anyone else.

In fact, it hurts you worse. So let's be the people of forgiveness, of mercy, of redemption. Let the church be known by that. I tell your friends, people will come and people will come flocking when they learn this is a place where you get redeemed, you get transformed, where the people forgive the way God forgives. Wow. This will be life-changing.

It's one of the strategies we outline, silencing the land. Your call as we come back. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown.

Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Hey friends, I've got a special announcement for you. In case you missed this on Friday, we're extending this through at least midnight tomorrow night.

So there's not much time to take advantage. If you're listening by podcast, what's today? Oh, Valentine's day, February 14th. Send a text to Nancy today. Hey, will you be my Valentine's?

She said, are you ready? Yeah, I guess after 45 years of marriage and 47 almost of being best friends. Yeah.

Lasting Valentine's there. So it's, it's the 14th. So you can go ahead and take advantage of this, but when you go to order your health supplements, some of the finest you could buy a wide variety variety of health issues. You go to order your health supplements, go to vitaminmission.com.

That's the place to go. But instead of the normal Dr. Brown code you use for 10% discount, use the health code, capital H and the word health E A L T H capital H E A L T H. Use that code. You get a double discount. So if you need it to stock up, it's a great time to do it. And then in addition to you saving, Dr. Stanley will still turn and give us a, a donation for each order. So take advantage of that. We had Dr. Stanley on us with fraud on Friday and announced it. Just want to re-announce that that it's running into this week as they've extended it a few days.

So use that code at vitaminmission.com. I am going to talk about Ukraine, Russia crisis. Just play a couple of clips. So, so make sure we understand some of what's going on.

I'm going to do that little while, but I want to get to some questions there. There's a call from, from Barry and white in New York and I'm just going to answer her question as we explained without bringing her on the air now. So she asked, what's the difference between charismatic and hyper charismatic? Well, this is something that is being put on, on people externally. In other words, no one identifies that I know of as I'm a hyper charismatic, right?

Just like someone in a cult doesn't identify that they're in a cult. So this is the way others are characterizing that. So the question would be when I use the terms, how am I using it? Like I'll talk about constructive critics and hyper critics. Well, those are, those are my terms.

I'm using them a certain way, right? So what do we mean when we say hyper charismatic? Those would be people that in our view are extreme, cultivate flaky practices and flaky beliefs. They would still be believers, but they would have some fringe beliefs that are off some practices that are off things that are out of balance and some dangerously.

So now I just want to remind you of something. When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, there were all kinds of problems there, right? But he wrote to them as brothers and sisters in Jesus and commended them for not falling behind in any spiritual gift. Yet they abused tongues, just public messages and tongues without interpretation. They were full of division, carnality. They were taking each other to court and bringing reproach to the name of Jesus before secular judges as we can't work this out ourselves. We can't work it out even with our church leaders. So we're going to go to court.

Neither of us are willing to humble ourselves and say, I'll just let it go. They were tolerating and even celebrating sexual sin as if it was a proof of Liberty. Man was sleeping with his father's wife. They, they abused the Lord's supper to the point that many were sick and some had died. Remember the congregation of Corinth in those days was only between 50 and 75 people according to many scholars and yet many were sick and some had died.

That's how abusive it was. And they denied the future resurrection of the body. Yeah. Which Paul says if you deny that, it's like denying the resurrection of Jesus. If he rose, others will rise. So this, if this church was around today, what would we say of it? Okay, they were new, but they, these were Paul's spiritual sons and daughters. What would we say about Paul? What kind of judgment would we bring on Paul? So there are those that today have practices that in my view are, are, are, they're not unbiblical to the point of heresy, but they can be dangerous or they can just be foolish or, or they can give way to carnality or they could celebrate so-called revelatory teaching and I'm just getting all this revelation that, that doesn't line up with scripture that that think that the true test of spirituality is how many hours you pray in tongues a day and your whole life can be a wreck.

But you know, these would be different things where people go to unhealthy extremes. When I teach on revival and I do believe that, that I have authority to teach on it, not just because of what scripture says, but because of what God's allowed me to experience over the decades in terms of being in the midst of genuine revival movements. So I can speak to this with some degree of experience and not just it's theoretical to me, but when we're right, revival comes, I've often said you can have controversy without revival, but you can't have revival without controversy. And Arthur Wallace in his classic book, In the Day of Thy Power said that if something claims to be a revival and it's not spoken against, check again to see it's really a revival, with reference back to Simon's prophecy over the baby Yeshua in Luke 2 verses 34 and 35. And Duncan Campbell, who is the leader used by God in the Hebrides revival, 1949 to 1952, seconded that opinion, that revival will always have controversy. So the, the challenge is to keep your focus and to keep biblical in the midst of the controversy.

So you have, you have two ditches on either side of the road. You have the ditch of traditional religion, which basically says we never saw it like this before. This can't be God because it's different than our traditions, therefore we reject it.

Then the other ditch on the other side of the road is manifestation mania, superficial sensationalism. For example, Pentecost, Feast of Shavuot, Feast of Weeks, Acts 2. The Holy Spirit comes in a very dramatic way with the sound of a blowing violent wind. The Holy Spirit comes with, with tongues of fire sitting on each of the hundred twenty. They begin to speak new languages and some see the phenomenon and they say you're drunk, these guys are drunk. Others hear the praises of God in their own language because there are Jews there from all over the world and these praises were being spoken in different languages.

Peter gets up and he explains what's happening. He says, this is what Joel prophesied about. And this outpouring of the Spirit and this supernatural speech and prophecy, that's, that's for the last days, so it's from here until Jesus returns.

That's a very definite statement there. But notice this, he explains it, but then he doesn't preach tongues. He doesn't preach tongues of fire.

He doesn't preach blowing violent wind. He preaches Jesus and, and he preaches Jesus crucified and risen. And he calls for his Jewish listeners to repent for rejecting the Messiah. And then he says, repent, be immersed in water, which they were very familiar with, the concept of being immersed for forgiveness, for cleansing, for a new beginning.

They were very familiar with that. Repent, be baptized, be immersed for the forgiveness of your sins through Jesus and you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So God wants to give you his Spirit. That, that's the final word there, but that's not the central message. So hyper-charismatics will, will focus on the secondary things, the tertiary things. They will focus on the things that are not as foundational and essential and therefore can get into all kinds of weirdness and error. And then on the flip side, you, you have those who become so cynical, who become so questioning of the things of the Spirit that they think they have the right to mock other believers. They think they have the, the right to, to slander.

They think that they are now the judge of everything. So that's dangerous. These ditches on either side of the road, they're both very dangerous. You say, what's staying in the middle of the road? Ground everything, ground everything in a Jesus centered way so that he is highly exalted to Jesus of the Bible. Focus on holiness and harvest, calling the loss to be saved, calling believers to turn from sin and compromise. Ground everything on the, on the, the major themes of scripture, major on the majors, and let the Holy Spirit move in your midst.

You do that, you'll stay on track. Hey, thank you Barry for the question. Much appreciated.

Let's go over to Dustin in White Lake, Michigan. Thanks for calling the line of fire. Hey Dr. Brown. How you doing? Doing very well, thank you. Good, I've actually called in before, it's good to hear, it's good to talk to you again.

Thanks. Hey, so I was calling about, how can we, you know, you were talking about cancel culture, how do we not get deceived biblically? Because, you know, as we're dealing with the culture and we're dealing with some people who radically don't want anything to do with Christians, and amongst other people of course, but how do I wrestle with that amongst my own doubts that every Christian has, but like, how do I, how do I wrestle with these things, and how do I grow stronger and more firm like you are, grounded in the faith, because, you know, I've watched, I've watched only a little bit of your content, and you're very, you're very loving, and you're very kind, and I want to be, I know I'm not trying to glorify you, but I want to be like, you know, I want to be like Christ, you know, seeing the image of Christ through you, you know what I mean? Yeah, well that's, that should be our, that should be our goal, right, where Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 11 one, and said, follow me as I follow Jesus, and we do want to be his representatives to be able to say, hey, I'm not Jesus, but he's changed me in ways that have made me a person that is loving and gracious, and I want to introduce you to him, our lives should draw people to him rather than revulse them and turn them away, so, so a couple things, Dustin. One is, for everybody, we've got to put down deep roots. There's no substitute for deep personal relationship with God, where you know him in a certain way that that faith is unshakable, and that takes quality time alone with God, reading the Word, meditating on the Word, studying the Word, applying the Word, seeking to live it out, and quality time and fellowship with God in prayer, and you should be encountering God in worship, prayer, in such a way where you know him, where there's a relationship with him, it's not just intellectual affirmation, but a relationship with him, where you're loving him with heart, soul, mind, strength. Also be in solid fellowship with other solid believers, especially those who are more mature than you, those who have more wisdom than you, learn from them, and let there be accountability that friends can speak into your life if they see something wrong, and then when you see a subject and it raises questions and issues, then go to those who have expertise, rather than trying to fight this battle for yourself, learn, get built up, and then take in the things that are challenging and difficult, rather than thinking, well, I just have to be bold and tackle everything, and then you get hit with a hundred questions at once, get ready, get built up, get prepared, and then go face up to things, and when you have questions, as I've had over the decades, you get with God, you study, you learn from others, and you come back with solid answers. Hey, God bless you. Be strong. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us. Hey, friends. If you just heard the ad for Dr. Stengler's website, vitaminmission.com, in partnership with the line of fire, remember, today, tomorrow, you can use the code HEALTH, capital H-E-A-L-T-H, get a double discount, 20%, so take advantage of that.

If you heard the ad with the normal code, use this one, use this one, and order big. That's where you can save even more, and in the process, help support line of fire as we go to expand onto many new radio stations this year. By God's grace and with his help. Okay, before I go back to the phones, just a little bit about Ukraine and Russia. Again, to be clear, I am absolutely not focused and expert on world politics in general. One thing within that, I focused on certain situations like Israel in the Middle East or religious freedoms in China or many moral and cultural issues in America and how that intersects with politics, but to be clear, this is not my area.

If I was going to have a major discussion and really try to dig in, I'd bring a guest on that had expertise on this. The question, why is Russia threatening an invasion of Ukraine? What's behind it? Well, there are different things, but one is just Vladimir Putin wanting to have a great legacy and the expansion of Soviet Union that's still in his blood kind of thing, but there's some other areas that tie in with that, at least that's how many feel. Here's a report on NBC a few days back explaining some of the background. There's going to be reference to a map, which I'll explain to those who are listening rather than watching.

Let's listen to this. For years, Vladimir Putin has complained the U.S. and West have lied to Russia and have forced him to take action. You promised us in the 1990s that NATO would not move an inch to the east, he said just weeks ago.

You cheated us shamelessly. Michael McFaul is the former U.S. ambassador to Russia. Putin has said the West, the United States is provoking us, provoking me. That's ridiculous.

Let's be clear. Nobody is provoking Putin. This was how Europe was aligned at the peak of the Cold War, split between willing NATO allies in blue to the West, and in red, countries that the Soviet Union used brutal force to keep in line with them. But when the Soviet Union fell, these Eastern European countries, now free, aligned with the U.S. and NATO. Russia's sphere of influence and its geographic buffer against NATO now shrunk considerably. Five NATO countries even border Russia, and many now host U.S. military bases.

And Ukraine, it sits here, almost alone between Russia and the West. Too many people are believing that this is somehow about NATO expansion, when it's really about an unprovoked military invasion should Putin decide to go in. Many are wondering why Ukraine and why now? Well, why now, I think, because President Putin has been obsessed with bringing Ukraine back into subjugation to Russia.

Putin believes that the Slavic nation, of which he considers Russians and Ukrainians to be part of a single nation, was unfairly and incorrectly broken up during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A full-scale invasion would likely be the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. And it could likely destabilize international markets. On Friday, as tensions rose, the S&P 500 plunged nearly 2 percent. That's a drop of $2,500 for the average American's 401k. And with Russia a huge provider of oil to the world, gas prices are likely to go higher.

They've already hit their highest level in eight years. I think the mistake we make in the West sometimes is we think that Putin's some kind of rational actor calculating the cost-benefit analysis of invasion, when in fact he's thinking about his place in the history books 50 years from now. All right, so that's this expert perspective. Again, it's one perspective on Putin. Many would agree with it. And by the way, filling my tank with gas today, I use economy, but I couldn't believe how high economy was. But premium was like over $4.

I was like, whoa, look at this. And some of this is some bad policies in place, inflation, et cetera, here in America. But some of it's also due to the potential crisis with Russia and Ukraine. It's complex in terms of gas and where Europe is getting gas from, et cetera. But anyway, if you look at the map, you see that these countries that border other European countries that are part of NATO were formerly part of the Soviet Union and now are part of NATO. So Ukraine is the one that's left, and it's larger.

We've got missionaries that have been living in Ukraine probably 20 years and working with orphans and other underprivileged kids and helping churches there. And they're not going anywhere. They're just praying. You know, Americans that are there. But the situation is very tense. So Jake Sullivan, national security adviser to the president, was on Jake Tapper. This is about a minute long.

Listen to their conversation. We cannot perfectly predict the day, but we have now been saying for some time that we are in the window and an invasion could begin, a major military action could begin by Russia in Ukraine any day now. That includes this coming week before the end of the Olympics. Of course, it could take place after the end of the Olympics, or it is still possible, we believe, that Russia could choose the diplomatic path. But the way they have built up their forces, the way they have maneuvered things in place makes it a distinct possibility that there will be major military action very soon. And we are prepared to continue to work on diplomacy, but we are also prepared to respond in a united and decisive way with our allies and partners should Russia proceed. I do think the world should be prepared for Russia staging a pretext and then launching a potential military action.

All right. So those concerns are shared by many. There are, I believe, 130,000 Russian troops that have amassed on the border.

There's a picture that went viral of her great grandmother, and she's laying on the ground in a shooting position with an AK-47 training and said, hey, you would do it too for your children. You would do it also. So tensions are rising, and things could get volatile. Just got a note from Jill Rosenberg, and Christians and Jews actually praying together in Estonia and are praying for God's mercy in Ukraine. So just pray, Lord, your will be done. Your will be done with Russia and Ukraine.

Your very best for the peoples of these countries and for the world that's affected. Lord, your best, your plan, bring it to pass and give President Biden courage and wisdom to do the right thing. Let's try to grab one more call. Michael and, all right, Michael in Ventura, California is gone. Let's go over to Laura. Oh, not quite ready to talk to Laura. Okay, let's do this.

Laura in Grand Rapids, Michigan, welcome to the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Brown, blessings to you. Thank you. I have a question.

I've been canceled. I'm a grandma and can't see my grandkids anymore. How old are they? What range and ages?

They are seven and 12. All right, and the reason your family canceled you? Because of our beliefs, mainly towards the gay lifestyle because, you know, we can't agree with it and, you know, they say that it's okay.

Yeah, it's a very common thing. You get excluded over that if you just hold to what the church and most of society's held to for thousands of years, namely that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and God made men for women and women for men. So let me ask you this, is, or either, either is it your daughter or your son? My son.

Your son. Okay, so, so it's, it's a heterosexual couple, so it's not that one of them has come out as gay or it's a, it's a gay couple. All right, so have you simply said, look, we don't have to talk about this and I'm not going to bring it up to the kids when they're with me.

Let's agree that we just don't talk about this. And you've proposed that to them? They proposed it to me because I would read them Bible stories and stuff and they just said, and then my oldest came home from school and said, you know, what is this LGBTQ whatever, what does this mean? And, you know, I tried to explain it the best I could for his age and said that, you know, God has a better plan, you know, and that's really not, not the way to go and so. So do you think, so did they not want you reading the Bible to them at all? Oh yeah, they don't want me to talk about religion, that's basically it.

Of course it was politics before, but I didn't talk about it like years ago when there were Trump signs out and I was driving by, I said, oh there's a Trump sign, you know, but I didn't talk about politics. So Laura, do you feel that it's more important to be involved with your grandkids to be there, have fun, you know, keep developing the relationships and stay out of this for now and then either hope that your son and his wife will have a change of heart or that they'll be a little older and you can just speak more freely. You feel it's best to say, okay, you know, I'm just trying to think about it with our grandkids. In fact, looking at the clock, I'm going to give you my opinion, just give you my input, okay?

I apologize for not being able to get your feedback on this. If it was my grandkids when they were younger and it was a matter of continue to build relationship with them and continue to just be who we are and they know who we are and we have fun and we love them so that the relationship is there and as they get older, then there can be more openness and less restriction and things like that. I would keep that door open. In other words, if that's what your son-in-law asked for, I'd say, okay, we just won't talk about that. If it comes up, say actually your mommy and daddy would rather talk to you, even though I can be hearing what you want them to hear, better to have that relationship and be Jesus to them.

That would be my view. You have to pray about it and think it through for yourself, but that's how I would appreciate it. Appreciate it. Approach it. Tomorrow's broadcast, by the way, is going to be relevant to this subject. You don't want to miss it. God bless. Another program powered by the Truth Network.