Best of Broadcast: Is God Depicted as Female in the Hebrew Bible?

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That's 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Dr. Michael Brown here, a pastor concerned with teaching that's been circulating among friends and colleagues that wants to point to the feminine aspects of God and even address God as mother. So, since it's early Jewish Thursday, so I was praying, thinking last night, which we wanted to go on the show today, so let's dig into the Hebrew Scriptures. And let's examine, does God ascribe gender to God? Is that at a place to speak of God in those terms? Does it matter that he's spoken of as the father and not the mother in Scripture?

This is just part of the worldly, contemporary, spirit of the age mentality that wants to question many things we've taken for granted in Scripture for many years. So we're going to dig into the Word and, as always on Thursday, we'll take your Jewish-related calls. 866-34-TRUTH.

That's 866-348-7884. So by Jewish-related, it can be regarding the Hebrew Scriptures, it can be regarding the Hebrew language, regarding Judaism, regarding the State of Israel today, Messianic prophecy, Jewish background to the New Testament, all that would qualify. Now, last week, for some odd reason, we had, more than any time in the history of the show, got a bunch of prank calls. And a few of them directly related to LGBT prankers or pro-gay activists or whoever they were. And a man who said he was a rabbi who identified as queer, etc.

We spoke at some length. I didn't know if it was a prank call or not. He said enough to make me think it could well have been a prank call, especially some people he mentioned at the end when we just checked on names.

They're just bogus names that were mentioned as, you know, minister, rabbi that had certain positions. But I kept the conversation going because I've had enough discussions like this to know that he was representing positions that people do hold to. So that whole thing was just a complete prank.

Either way, we had the discussion because it did touch on relevant issues in any case. If you're calling to prank today, why not find something better to do? All right. But it was wild, just out of the blue last Thursday.

866-348-7884. In this article, five years ago, I made these points. I said that if this rabbi, it was Rabbi Mark Samoth who claimed that the Hebrew Bible in its original language offers a highly elastic view of gender and counter to everything we grew up believing the God of Israel, the God of the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions to which fully half the people on the planet really belong, was understood by its early worshipers to be a dual-gendered deity. That's absolute nonsense. Absolute nonsense to say it like that.

Now, I made these points. Had the rabbi simply stated that God transcends gender, I would have no argument. Because gender is ultimately something earthly in terms of biological sex, male versus female. Does God, an infinite spirit, transcend gender? Of course.

Obviously. If he had only said that when God created human beings, he created them male and female, indicating that the fullness of the meaning of both male and female is to be found in God, I would have concurred. Amen to that. In other words, the full expression of God's nature is found in both men and women, created in his image and yet with distinctives.

All right? So, agree with that. And if Rabbi Samoth had simply pointed out that there are aspects of motherly care attributed to God in the Scriptures, like Isaiah 49, 15, which we'll look at in a moment, I would have also concurred. And in rabbinic Judaism, the Shekhinah, the manifest presence of God, also emphasizes some of the motherly aspects of God. So, no argument on any of those points.

No argument at all. But Rabbi Samoth was saying something much more than that, and those who are arguing for something much more than that today would actually want us to conceive of God as mother, or heavenly mother, or even pray to God as mother, or refer to God as she as well as he. That we must firmly resist as unbiblical and heretical. Recognizing, again, that God transcends gender, recognizing that God created us male and female in his image, and recognizing, again, that there are motherly aspects of God in terms of his tenderness and his compassion and his empathy. We understand all that.

Don't argue with any of that. It's interesting that he reveals himself to us as the Father. The Father.

The Father. Let me just remind you of this and run through a few Scriptures, then we're going to dig into the Hebrew Bible together. Matthew 11-27, Jesus says, All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Matthew 24-36, No one knows the day of his return, not the Son, only the Father. Matthew 28-19, Baptizing the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. It's on and on through the New Testament. Think of something as simple as John 14-6, right?

What does Jesus say there? He's the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to what? The Father, except through him.

How about a passage like John 5-19? Jesus says, The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only when he sees the Father during it. For whatever the Father does, the Son does. For the Father loves the Son. As the Father raises the dead, the Father judges no one. The Son, he's given all judgment to the Son.

Everyone should honor the Son as they honor the Father. And why this revelation of God as Father? Why did Yeshua teach us to pray Avinu, our Father in heaven? Why does he put the Spirit within us by which we cry out Abba?

Why don't we cry out Imah? Mother, why do we cry out Abba, Father? What does Paul write in 1 Corinthians, the 8th chapter?

What does he say there? He says, The people in the world, they have many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus, the Messiah, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. There is something about God as Father that is important in our relationship. Just as the role of the Father in the home and the role of the Father with children plays a certain role and the mother a certain role, the fatherlessness aspect of things has certain destructive effects in unique ways on children and the plagues that we have in our society. And here, the Father is the source and the origin, and when we relate to him in this way, it is critical, it is essential.

So what do we do with different passages in the Hebrew Bible that might emphasize other aspects of God's character? Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. So, in the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, different renderings of that, right?

And then it goes through the earth, unformed and void, darkness over the face of the deep. Now, the new JPS version says a wind from God sweeping over the water, but the better argument, I believe, is that where it says, Ruach Elohim, Ruach Elohim, Ruach Hefet, Apnei Amayim, that that is the Spirit of God. And if you know Hebrew grammar, you see it's Marachefet, hovering, which is feminine. So the Hebrew word for spirit or wind or breath is feminine.

But here's what's important to understand. Is there something specifically feminine about breath? Something specifically feminine about wind?

The answer is no. Just like everything in certain languages, Spanish, Italian, if you're speaking that, has to have male or female, right? That everything has to have a gender, so you can refer to it as male or female. So, as I was mentioning right here, this desk, this shulchan, is male, and this chair, this kisei, is male.

Kisei is thrown in Scripture, right? So the point is that maleness and femaleness of things of that kind don't really tell us anything. But even if you wanted to argue that the Spirit of God represents certain feminine aspects of God, even if you wanted to argue that, which is not a scriptural argument, in other words, when you go through the Bible and look at Ruach, it does not have specific feminine connotations. And in the New Testament, it can be neuter in terms of gender. So it's not specifically feminine as it's being used in the New Testament. So that's another argument that pushes back. But the Spirit is poured out like water.

There are different pictures and analogies that are used. So the bigger question is, okay, are there verses where God is called Mother, or where God is spoken of as the Mother, or the Heavenly Mother, or we pray, Our Mother, anywhere in the Bible? No. Zero. Never. Never, never, never. Not a single time.

Nothing close to it. So what kind of verses are raised to argue that we should relate to God as Mother as well as relate to God as Father? Well, one of the verses is Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses 11 and 12. Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses 11 and 12. And it says, Like an eagle who rouses his nestlings, gliding down to his young, so did he spread his wings and take him, bear him along in his pinions.

Lord alone did guide him, no alien god at his side. You say, well, hang on, it's masculine. Knesher, that's like an eagle, masculine. Yahir, rouses, that's a masculine noun. Kino, his nestlings, everything in it, even yiracheif is masculine, not mirachef or tiracheif here, but yiracheif, masculine.

I mean, I was stunned. Someone sent me this verse the other day, saying this is one of the verses that's being used, because this mentions an eagle. It's talking about a male eagle here.

People are stretching this far to try to come up with these nuances. Whereas throughout Scripture, here, God has revealed that Moses sings the song, he's an ishmael chamal, he's a man of war. He's often spoken of as a man. Again, he transcends gender, but he reveals himself to us in this way, and he reveals himself as he, rather than she, and incarnates himself in this world as the son of God, as a man, not as a woman.

There are reasons for that. He's called a man of war, but he's never called directly a woman, ever, not once in the Bible, in the multiplied thousands of references to God, not once. All right, we'll come back, look at more Scripture, and take your calls. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the Line of Fire now by calling 866-342.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. What sacred words from Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 6, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, where the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. It's Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. I'm going to be getting to your calls shortly. 866-348-7884. Any Jewish-related question will be getting there shortly.

I want to read something to you from this article that I wrote five years ago, and it's this. The name Yahweh, of the more than 6,000 times that the name Yahweh occurs in the Hebrew Bible, it never occurs with a feminine adjective or verbal form. The name is exclusively masculine. Even more importantly, this is the consistent revelation of God in the Scriptures. He is the Heavenly Father, not the Heavenly Mother. He is a man of war, not a woman of war. He is the king, not the queen. He is the shepherd, not the shepherdess. He is the husband to the widow, not the wife of the widower. He is the Lord, not the lady, the master, not the mistress.

He is the groom, while Israel is the bride. And on and on it goes countless thousands of times. So friends, let's just step back and analyze and recognize this desire to see the feminine side of God or view God as Heavenly Mother is part of a cultural trend. It is the sexual revolution just continuing to sweep into the church. It is nothing less than that. And I guarantee you, as surely as I'm sitting here and speaking to you, as surely as you're hearing my voice, I guarantee you that those that go in this direction and argue for this theology will increasingly depart from other fundamental aspects of the faith.

And over a certain period of time will begin to question the authority of Scripture, or begin to question male and female marriage being the only acceptable unions in God's sight, or will begin to question other doctrines or salvation exclusively through Jesus, Yeshua. Guaranteed. Guaranteed. And I can just say, watching this happen in the past, you know where this leads. Think of all the illustrations where God is the aggrieved husband and Israel is committing adultery with other men, right, as they worship, the people of Israel worship idols.

These are always the images. This is how, these are how things are related. Let's look at some other verses that are quoted. Deuteronomy 32, verse 18. So we've seen the bogus reference to Deuteronomy 32, 11.

What about this? You neglected the rock that begot you, so the Hebrew is yalad, which means to father or beget. Forgot the God who brought you forth. All right, now, does that mean to bring forth as in labor, like a woman in labor? Yeah, it could have that image, bringing forth painfully, considering to bring forth, but the key thing is it is ale, it is God as masculine that does this. So he is not, he's talking about bringing Israel forth, whatever process he did, even if it's likened to a woman in childbirth, God, the pain with which God brings Israel forth, the fact is it's a male deity. There were plenty of female deities in the ancient world that were worshiped, some of the most powerful deities in the ancient world. Go into the New Testament, right, with Diana, worshiped by the Ephesians. You say, oh, yeah, yeah, but El Shaddai, Shaddai is the many-breasted God. Shaddai in Hebrew is breast, and God is the many-breasted God.

Nonsense. The many-breasted deities were female. We have the iconography.

We have the statues. We know what they look like, the women with multiple breasts. There were female deities, and this was part of their prolific fruitfulness and things like this and their abundance.

This is how it was depicted, but that's common. You say, but don't scholars debate the meaning of Shaddai? Yes, but the top scholars, almost all will virtually dismiss this many-breasted idea because it does not fit with a male deity, and Shaddai is always male. It could come from Shaddad, which has to do with being strong. It could relate in terms of God coming in judgment. The biblical writers have a play on it.

He showed me Shaddai Yavo. It will come as a destruction from Shaddai, but the root Shaddad, the Akkadian word for mountain, Shaddu, so God is a rock, a mountain, powerful. Some have broken up into Shaddai, that He is enough, the God that is more than enough. It's often how the rabbis took it. But no, there's not active scholarly discussion that, yeah, this is very probably the many-breasted God.

No, that applies to female deities, and there are many other explanations for Shaddai, and you don't find ancient traditions in Judaism where they're taking it to be a many-breasted deity. How about Isaiah 42, 14? What does that say? That God will cry out like a woman in labor. Sometimes the Israelites cry out. In times of judgment, they cry out like women in labor. I've kept silent far too long, kept still and restrained myself. Now I'll scream like a woman in labor.

I will pant and I will gasp. That makes God into a mother? That makes God into female? That He's going to scream like a woman in labor?

Raise His voice like a woman in labor? Have you never heard of metaphors and analogies? If I said, yeah, that God was in so much pain, He was screaming like a woman in labor, did I just say He was a woman?

No. What about Isaiah 49, 15? What do we make of that?

Nothing to make of. God's care is even more tender than the care of a mother. Can a woman forget her baby or disown the child of her womb? You'd expect the answer would be no, but He says, no, she might forget, but I'll never forget you.

I love you even more than a nursing mother. He's not saying He's female. I mean, again, you think you got the multiplied thousands of references to God in male context, in male ways, and referred to as He, Father, and all of this. And these lengthy passages where Israel is like a woman that he marries and loves and she departs and is with other lovers and on and on and on and on and on. There's abundant evidence from the beginning of the Bible right to the end. And then you have verses where God compares Himself to this, where God compares. Look, He's called a rock.

Do we therefore conclude that God does not relate to us because He's just a rock? How about Isaiah 66, 13? These are just verses that people have put forward arguing for this Mother God stuff.

You think, if this is their best ammunition, this is pretty bad. So what about Isaiah 66, 13? What does that say? Just waiting for that to come up on my screen, or I'll just grab it on my own screen here. Isaiah 66, 13.

Every so often we'll have something freeze up. As a mother comforts her son, so I'll comfort you. You shall find comfort in Jerusalem.

And that proves God is female? How about 1 Thessalonians 2, where Paul, speaking of himself and other apostles, we were like a nursing mother. Paul, speaking of himself, it says, yeah, we're not looking for praise from people, not from you or anyone else, even though as apostles of Christ we could have asserted authority. He said, we were like young children among you, just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we care for you. We said, we're like young children among you.

We weren't looking for anything. We were just in this for ourselves. Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we care for you. So does that mean that Paul, we should relate to Paul as a woman? Because he said, we care for you like a nursing mother? That God says I'm going to comfort you like a mother?

It boggles my mind that people think that these are actually arguments, especially with where they go with it. How about Hosea? One last one from the Hebrew Bible. Hosea chapter 11, beginning in verse 11. I fell in love with Israel when he was still a child, and I've called him my son ever since Egypt. We normally hear it translated when Israel was a child.

And I loved him. Thus were they called, but they went their own way. They sacrificed to Baalim, to the Baals, and offer to carved images. And he says, I've pampered Ephraim, I've taken him by his arms, but they didn't know that I was the one that healed him. So because he's talking about dealing with a baby, dealing with a little child, that makes God into a mother?

Again, these verses were sent to me by someone to whom they were sent, and the one sending them was very serious. It made the claim that seven different times in the Bible, God's referred to his mother. No, God's never referred to his mother, ever, in the Bible. Does he have motherly characteristics along with fatherly characteristics? Yes.

Does he transcend gender? Yes. Does he care for his people more than a nursing mother cares for her child? Yes.

Yes to all of that. Just as Paul cared like a nursing mother for the Thessalonians. But, okay, what about the New Testament where Jesus says in Matthew 23, how often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings? That proves God is mother. Jesus, speaking of himself, pre-existent, how often he, he, Jesus, as the son of God, wanted to gather Israel's chicks together as a hen, like, like, like, as, metaphor, analogy, like a hen, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. So, again, you've got, if we were just going to stack these up, we'd have a stack of verses so high that it would go from here up many, many floors.

It's a one-story building. Well, got one extra little room up there, but if we had a 10-story building, if we had a skyscraper, 100 stories, we'd keep piling the verses up with male references to God or God as Father or God depicted in male ways. And then a handful of times where he relates to his people like a mother, and again, reminds us that he transcends gender and that male and female are created in his image.

But it is really important, it is really important we relate to him as Father, as the Heavenly Father, and that's why Yeshua directs us to pray to our Father in heaven. Everything flows from that. We'll be right back straight to your calls. Welcome, welcome to the Line of Fire. It is Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, 866-34-TRUTH with your Thoroughly Jewish calls. This is not, well, Mark Zuckerberg, Jewish, right?

I can tie it in. Yeah, just saw the headlines. Facebook is changing its name to Metta. Oh, yeah. You know, it's interesting. I mean, not that Facebook was some amazing name either, or Twitter is some amazing name. Things are what they are. But you think of all the money that must have gone into the decision. Facebook, Inc. rebrands as Metta to stress Mettaverse plan.

Whatever the Mettaverse plan is, is it tied in with the multiverse? No, probably not. Okay.

866-34-TRUTH, we go to George in Jacksonville, Florida. Thanks for calling the Line of Fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, thanks for taking my call.

Sure. I'm reading a book called Fashioned terrain. It was published in 2013.

Chris volatile. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but he puts forth a very interesting idea regarding how, and this kind of ties into your discussion about how we should refer to God, whether male or female. He describes in this book that when Adam was created, that he was intersex, that he was not just male, he was also male and female. And then later on, when God decides to create woman, he takes the feminine, not only the feminine personality or characteristics of a female, but also the actual, you know, et cetera, and create ease. That kind of sounds bizarre to me, to be honest, and I certainly don't want to misrepresent this guy's point of view here, but in this context of what we're talking about here, he's kind of suggesting that God himself, like when you kind of said it, transcends gender.

And that it's kind of pushing, I don't know, I'm really trying to wrap my head around it. Chris is actually a friend, you know, we're in touch every so often, but he's a friend and colleague. We've never discussed this issue, and I'm quite confident that he would agree with every point I've made today, and would resist any idea of referring to God as she or God as mother, anything like that. We refer to God as our heavenly mother, et cetera. And interestingly, as Roman Catholicism developed, then you have the whole exaltation of Mary and that motherly aspect there, but there's no confusing Mary with the father in that regard. I'm not Catholic, but the point is, if there was the female in God, then you wouldn't have needed the Mary in terms of how things developed in Catholicism. But there is, there are some ancient Jewish traditions, not biblical, many centuries after Genesis, that would think of Adam as androgynous, or even picture Adam as like back to back, like Siamese twin kind of thing, male and female, and then God separates, you know, those types of ideas. And you'd say in Genesis 1, God tells Adam, so Adam is masculine and is man or mankind, as well as the personal name Adam, that God says to Adam, be fruitful and multiply, right? So that is already presupposing male and female separated. I don't see it like that, where it says that God takes his side and then closes up the flesh. I don't see that as saying that it's like back to back Siamese twins, so I would not read it like that at all. And I've always just dismissed that as rabbinic speculation, because there's a ton of rabbinic speculation on all kinds of things.

You have to sift through hundreds and thousands of ideas. But there are some. I mean, Chris is not alone in saying that.

There are plenty of others who have had that idea. And then God differentiates between the male and the female. But always, from the beginning of God being identified as Elohim, and then Yahweh being used in a masculine way, all of the times he's revealed and spoken to, it's always one thing. There's never the she part, the mother part in addressing God or viewing God. And even if there was some truth to that, certainly within Adam, there were qualities of male and female on some level, right? Because it says she's called Isha, woman, because she's taken out of the ish, man.

So that's true. And it's bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. This is why male and female can become one in a way that male and male can't, and female and male, excuse me, male and male can't, and female and female can't. Because that same plus same, this is out of the one, the differentiation now comes back together. So that's what makes the union between male and female unique. So there is something of the female that was in Adam when first created. I just don't see it in the physical way, as was explained in this book.

But certainly something of the female nature. Go ahead. Can I make a just thanks for you make me feel a lot better about reading this book, by the way, but just one last comment.

And it's off topic. And so forgive me for this. But I've been I've been watching the Brownsville revival sermon from Father's Day 1995. And Dr. Brown, I, of course, as he was talking, he's talking about how God's been moving on him previous to getting there. And I'm just thinking how prophetic everything he's saying of knowing what came after that.

It just really chills down my spine, just watching it. And how, how I just I want to ask you this one last thing. There are several sermons in there that you can find on the internet.

And you, you know, you probably were there to solve this. But the style of preaching he uses, I don't know, Dr. Brown, if we're talking about for revival in America, whether the church the church is and I'm making a very broad statement. The churches here in the United States would accept that kind of preaching today, because by today's standards, he's, he's considered negative. He's considered narrow minded all across. And unfortunately, I've been to a church where they actually backed up from talking about hell, because it's negative.

Yeah, and they don't want to bring people down, quote unquote. And so I'm going to talk about my reservations. Number one, Steve had been talking to me months before Brownsville. And we'd known each other a few years at that point, by phone and by book and things. And he was always passionate, earnestly seeking God, always going for the loss. But he told me that God had touched him afresh, and he was seeing God move in amazing ways. And so he was even more excited than normal.

That was prior to Brownsville. What's interesting, though, is God only called me to be part of the revival 11 months into it. And then I was there for serving for four years. And I had only known the building packed and the people running to the altar and the massive response and repentance and weeping every night and so on. And I was bringing back videos for Nancy to watch. And I was in my study, working on something one day, and I heard her laughing.

And I said, What are you laughing at? I came in, she goes, I can't believe the first message. It seemed like nothing. In other words, it was prophetic, because it's like, huh, this is it.

This is the beginning. But God was moving and the Spirit was poured out. And what's interesting is that Steve preached uncompromisingly against sin, very loud, clear messages.

I think there are hundreds online and there were books of sermons that were printed and warned about hell, warned about judgment, did it with tears, and lost sinners knew that he loved them. But what happened was when they came running to the altar to flee from judgment, and to run to the cross, they received supernatural forgiveness. And instead of leaving hopeless, they left regenerated, full of life, full of joy, and tears of joy when they would hear their baptismal testimonies weeks or months later, and they talk about the transformation of the lives was glorious. So the key thing is to connect people with God. So he would always give the promise, but preach in a scriptural way, warning about sin. There are many churches in America that would welcome a strong gospel message and the pastors and leaders bring it, but these were evangelistic sermons to reach the lost and the backslidden every night. So you could not have a steady diet of that just for your home congregation. In other words, that was not the Sunday morning diet for the people where that was their church home. That was the reaching out to a lost and dying world and to the backslider and to the compromised church.

And that was super important to do that. If Steve was pastoring, then it would come out in a different way on Sundays because you're nurturing the flock, etc. But you're right, many would not hear what 2 Timothy 4 talks about people with itching ears.

They just want people that'll tickle their ears. That's always been an issue from the Old Testament until now, and it often comes up, but it's come up a lot more because we have a man-centered, me-centered gospel. It starts with me. I've said over and again, the American gospel is, this is who I am, this is how I feel, and God is here to please me. The biblical gospel is, this is who God is, this is how he feels, and we are here to please him. We used to preach that we're wretched sinners and God's grace is amazing. Now we tell sinners, you're just amazing. You're incredible. You're wonderful. God would love to get to know you. Well, what do you need to be saved for?

Well, give him some time. I know I'm amazing. I'll get to know God when I have some time. So, yes, very different message. But there is hunger, there is thirst, and there is a rise and cry for the return to a biblically based gospel.

My book, Revival or We Die, my new book, does have chapters that deal with that very subject. Hey, thank you for the call. 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Ben in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Welcome to the line of fire. Hey, thanks for having me, Doc. Appreciate it.

You bet. So, I follow the ministry quite a bit, and my question for you on Jewish Thursday is, what is, so I follow Christian rap, and there's kind of a growing movement of the Hebrew Israelite movement. It's kind of gained a lot of steam, and I think it has some relevance because of, well, Israel's prophetic purpose and unnecessary race tension. So, I think my question is, what is the clearest way to deal with the idea that, or should we even deal with that idea? Should we ignore it, or what's the clearest way to deal with it when we come across it? Right, so there are voices that have been addressing this.

You know, you may have seen some of the videos of Vocab Malone. I have a friend who's really scholarly in these areas, a black Jewish friend, Messianic, and I plan to do an extended dialogue with him to really flesh this out a lot more. But the short answer is, as much as possible, don't debate the side issue, but preach Jesus, Yeshua, and talk about freedom, forgiveness of sin, new life in Him, rather than debate that you're an Israelite or you're not an Israelite, et cetera, or Jews, the manifestation of, you know, white Jews, the manifestation of Satan. So, stay right there.

I'll finish on the other side of the break. 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. Oh yeah, Isaiah 12. You will draw water with joy in the wells of salvation.

I love it. Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, welcome to the broadcast. This is Michael Brown. So, Ben, on a couple of occasions, one time many years ago in New York City, somewhere in the early 90s, and then, oh, a couple years ago, maybe, maybe in Charlotte, a year or two ago, I had confrontations with black Hebrew Israelites on the streets, and, you know, went up and engaged them, felt I was to do that. And tried to expose their ugliness, their hatred, their misinterpretation of Scripture. But I also did it as a witness to others that were watching. But in terms of actually bearing fruit with the people with whom I was speaking, I don't know that it did any such thing. I just did it in obedience to the Lord. Or just almost something I couldn't resist doing, but it really felt, especially in New York, that I was to do what I did. The biggest thing to me is to contrast their hatred with our love, their message of legalism and anger with their free message of forgiveness through the cross.

And that's what I sought to do. Are there African Americans who can trace themselves back to Africa and an Israelite or Jewish expression there that slaves coming over secretly practice these things? Certainly, yes. Do some date back to scattered tribes of Israel, then going into Africa, then intermarrying? As you have, say, the Lemba tribe in Africa, some other tribes with DNA testing have indicated, yes, that they would have Israelite roots.

Because those things do exist. The idea that white Jews are not Jews is nonsense. The idea that every black person is originally Israelite nonsense. But for most, it's best to really get to the Gospel issues and say, hey, let's not even discuss that. Let's talk about who Jesus is, who Yeshua is, and what the Gospel is, and what it means to be saved, and how you receive forgiveness of sins. That's where I would put my emphasis, okay?

Okay, I appreciate your response. And like I said, it is kind of a growing movement. So one of the reasons I had that question is because, like you said, the onlookers are kind of keeping their eyes peeled and then watching some of these guys that were being grounded in the faith kind of slip into this new thing. Yeah, so the good side of it is that this was a rapidly growing movement in inner cities of America, but completely under the radar of most national apologists.

You know, Dr. James White took on a black Hebrew Israelite a couple years ago, and that resulted in many leaving that cult and coming to the truth. And we heard good reports about that as things were exposed, and others getting more involved. But it was something that was just it was kind of off the radar. It wasn't on the internet so much. So now that it's getting more attention, now it can be addressed more, because very easy to demolish the lies behind it. So the negative is it's spreading more. The good news is that there are more people aware of it and addressing these errors aggressively. And behind a lot of it is ultimately going to be an anti-Jewish spirit, that there's an anti-Semitism and wanting to deny the Jewishness of Jews.

That's always going to be part of it. All right, hey, question for you. Try to remind myself to ask every day, have you visited vitaminmission.com and taken advantage of the special Dr. Brown offer? When you plug in our special code with Dr. Mark Stengler's health supplements, you get a special discount and then a donation made to our ministry with every order. I have been so blessed. I'm so grateful to the Lord that he got hold of me seven and a quarter years ago and delivered me from all the unhealthy things I'd eaten virtually all my life and just helped me to enjoy eating healthily every single day. And I do it with joy, not feeling deprived, but with joy. But the health benefits, the energy, the vitality, the life, and then the supplements that take immune wellness and joint plus, these different ones that have been so helpful. It blesses me to be able to share them with you and to know we can give you a discount and to know that our ministry is then blessed to get on more stations and to reach more people. Take advantage of this. Share it with your family, friends. You'll find the supplements are second to none and I really want to see you healthy as much as possible, spiritually, physically.

So vitaminmission.com, that's the place to go. Alright, let's go over to Spencer in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Welcome to the line of fire. Thank you. How are you doing today, Dr. Brown?

Doing just fine, thanks. Great. So I have a question. Well, first I have a statement. I came from out of the Jehovah's Witness background years ago.

Okay, great. And I still am in conversation quite often with a few of the Jehovah's Witnesses. And a little while ago, I actually started studying just basic Hebrew from a teacher. And I, when we've discussed things related to the Trinity, I have noticed a few things that I think it was off the top of my head in Genesis 3.8, where when I was looking into the wording, the words that were used, some of the Hebrew key words regarding Elohim, or sorry, Adam, hearing the sound of Elohim in the garden. It wasn't written saying that it was Elohim walking in the garden. But I've read two different versions of it where the word is kol, or kol, kof, and then lamed, lacking the vowel point. And then another version, I saw devar, or word, that it was the sound or word of Elohim walking with Adam in the garden. And then I also was wondering if that, in a sense, is a parallel to the Logos in John 1.1, where Yeshua became flesh, the word became flesh, and then tabernacled with us. Yeah. What is your opinion on that?

On a certain level, I would agree, but let me just correct one thing. So it does mention kol, which is voice or sound. It doesn't say devar.

Devar is not used there. So Adam hears the sound of the Lord walking in the garden. So kol can mean voice, or it simply means sound. So it would suggest that God literally, in visible form, walked with Adam and Eve in the garden.

Okay. It would imply that. Now, you can't be dogmatic about that. We know elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, God does appear in literal human form, like in Genesis 18, for example. So the point would be that we know that elsewhere, John 1.18, no one has seen God at any time, right? Or 1 Timothy 6, the same thing, that he dwells in unapproachable light, no one has seen or can see. In John 5, Jesus says, you've never seen him.

So the question is, who was seen? And the answer is, it's the Son who makes him known. So the Father, the Creator and source of all things, remains hidden in his glory. And it's the Son who makes him known. So when the Hebrew Bible speaks of seeing God, it would be the Son that they've seen. Just like in the New Testament, Jesus says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father, right?

Yeah, sure. Right, so in that sense, is it like a pre-incarnate example of the logos of God revealing himself in this way? The answer could be, very well could be true.

The only issue, the only caveat is that God creates Adam and Eve, right? So before the fall, you would have assumed that they could be in the presence of God and see his glory, and they wouldn't die because of their perfection. But then after the fall, they wouldn't. The fact is, God is appearing to them after the fall. So that would suggest that the direction that you're going there is correct. You know one of the saddest things, though, about the Jehovah's Witnesses, aside from the quota and the work orientation and the peer pressure with fear, but the translation of the Bible is lousy.

It's not just bad Hebrew, bad Greek, but it doesn't have life to it. You know what I'm saying? Years ago, two guys knocked on my door where I was living in Jehovah's Witnesses, and the one guy was in training with the older one, and they're here to talk to me. So I just talked about the relationship I had with God and forgiveness of sins and intimacy with God and the beauty of knowing him and being with him forever, full of the life that was inside of me, poured it out to them, and then I said, so what are you offering me that I don't have? And they'd just been trained, and the trainees said, well, hope for the future. I felt so bad for them, because there they are.

Sometimes it's a hot day, and you're out there and just going through it. May God open the hearts of Jehovah's Witnesses around the world. Some are just raised in it, don't know better, but some so sincere and trying to do the right thing. May God give them an encounter with truth. May their hearts and minds be open. May they really come to know God. Hey, Spencer, blessings on you.

May the Lord use your testimony to touch others. Hey, friends, be sure to visit our website. Check out my latest articles and videos. Be sure to sign up for our emails. You don't want to miss out on what we're sending out. That's askdrbrown, A-S-K-D-R brown dot org. God bless. Another program powered by the Truth Network.