How This World Prepares Us for the World to Come

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Do you know that as we walk with the Lord, every single day we are making preparation for eternity? It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on The Line of Fire.

And now here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Let me shout it from the rooftops. Jesus is Lord. God is our rock. The Word of God is eternally true. Welcome, friends, to the broadcast. Michael Brown, delighted to be with you here to infuse you with faith and truth and courage based on the truth of the Word of God and the reality of the God of the Word.

I believe what I'm going to share with you today is going to be eye-opening for some, but edifying for all who believe the Scriptures to be God's Word. Also, I'm going to take calls on any subject you want to talk to me about today, including those who want to, well, you got an issue, you want to discuss something you differ with me about. Phone lines are open 866-348-7884. Also want to catch up on some relevant news that ties in with subjects we often talk about here on The Line of Fire.

866-348-7884. Okay, I think a lot about eternity. I don't believe I think as much as I should about eternity, but I do think a lot about eternity, namely the life that I have, the life that I'm living, how does it look in the light of eternity? Since one day we'll all stand before God and give account for our lives, if we're believers, when I give account for our sins, in other words, we've been forgiven by the blood of Jesus, we've been forgiven by the mercy of God if we're in right relationship with him, but we will give account for our lives. What kind of stewards were we? How did we fulfill the assignment that God has given us? There will be a day of accounting for us as believers.

Scriptures are really quite clear about that, and some of the parables of Jesus point to that, that there'll be an accounting on that day. On a certain level, you could say to yourself, the only thing that matters is saving lost people. That's all that matters, because ultimately forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, there are going to be those who are saved and those who are lost. So that's all that's going that's all that's going to matter forever and ever and ever. It doesn't matter if we did other things that were good in this world because they won't last forever. You could think like that. Then, of course, the question would come up, well then, why care at all about this world?

Why does it even matter? Why should Christians be so involved in caring for the poor and the needy, which has always been part of the gospel and always been a hallmark of the church through the centuries? Why should Christians stand for righteousness if it's just society and society's going to change back and forth and so on? Why should we do other things? Why shouldn't we just focus on one thing alone, getting the maximum number of people saved, going to heaven, and then we're out of here? Now, on the one hand, winning the lost is of great importance to God and should be of great importance to us. But, of course, we know the Great Commission is not just to win the lost but to make disciples because God's goal for us, what does Paul write in Romans 8, that we are being conformed to the image of his son, that this is of paramount importance in God's sight, that his plan is not just to get sinners, quote, saved and into heaven forever, or when heaven comes down to earth with God forever and the new heavens and the new earth, but to conform us to the image of his son. So here's the first thing to think about. Every day of your life is a preparation for eternity.

If you're in right relationship with God, if you're one of his children, then every day of your life is preparation for eternity because every day you want to become more like Jesus. And you can do that in whatever setting you're in. You can do that alone with your kids at home.

You can do that digging ditches by the side of the road. You can do that as an airline pilot. You can do that as a preacher behind the pulpit.

You can do that as an invalid shut in at home. Every single day you can grow. We can grow in terms of becoming more like Jesus. That's part of preparation for eternity. This is something that always matters to God.

Therefore, when you go through difficult times, how do you respond in that moment? That's not just for the now, but that's for eternity. It's part of shaping who you are, unless you think. And unless you think that basically everybody is going to enter the world to come exactly the same, that the thief on the cross enters the world to come exactly like Paul.

I don't believe that for a split second. Equally saved? Yes.

Equally forgiven? Yes. Equally children of God? Yes. But equally developed as children of God?

Certainly not. So I want to encourage you, even when it doesn't look like you're doing the work of ministry, even when you're not out actively winning the loss, even when that is not the case, the fact of the matter is that you are being conformed to the image of his Son as you walk with the Lord and yield your life to him. Sometimes the least ministry-related things we're doing are actually shaping us and molding us to be more like Jesus. That's one thing.

Here's the second thing. As we stand up for what is right, as we push back against the darkness, we are glorifying God in the world. We are being witnesses. We are showing the world what God's values are like, not trying to impose our religious beliefs on everyone, but we are functioning as salt and light.

Now consider this. If we rightly understand the parables of Jesus and some of his teaching about ruling over cities in the world to come, if we understand those rightly to be referring to the millennial kingdom — and there's debate about this, all right? My personal understanding is that there will be a thousand year kingdom on the earth when Jesus returns and then after that we go into new heavens and new earth and eternity. Of course there's debate on that. And yes, I could point to a lot of scripture and what the early church believed, others would point to other scriptures and what later theologians believed.

I don't want to debate that now. But if that understanding is correct, think of this. Jesus will say to this one, okay, rule over 10 cities, but over this one rule over five cities. In other words, you've been responsible. You've been a good steward over what I gave you. It could be the same with your finances and honoring the Lord with your finances. And in doing so, you are becoming a good steward for the kingdom.

In doing so, you're helping those in need. In doing so, you're helping win the loss, you're funding the gospel, etc., right? But on that day if we understand this rightly, then we will be ruling under Jesus during the millennial kingdom. We know the 12 apostles will sit on 12 thrones, according to Matthew 19 28, and rule over the tribes of Israel. So if we're right to understanding that, what we're doing in this world now, standing for righteousness, raising our voices to protest against injustice, giving ourselves for God's purposes, not directly evangelizing, but functioning as the salt and the light. If that is the case, then in addition, we are being prepared to rule under the Lord. We are, by taking a stand for righteousness today, preparing for the day when righteousness will rule the entire earth. By standing for justice today, we are preparing for the day when justice will cover the earth.

By being responsible stewards in this age, we'll be entrusted with things in the age to come. That encourages me, because sometimes I think to myself, I would just rather give myself to world missions, and supporting world missions, and supporting evangelism in America, and supporting Jewish evangelism, and do nothing other than that, and give my life to that. I mean, why do we spend so much time teaching people the Bible, and growing in our knowledge? You go, hey, we got eternity to learn more about God.

Let's just win the loss now, right? Why do we launch that program to help starving children in this country, to help dig wells for impoverished people in these other countries, and let's just share the gospel, and then they go to heaven? Now, obviously, these are crazy ideas to even say these words, but I'm just saying, you could logically think like that, but no, we understand our calling is to be disciples. Now, here's one more, one more thing here, and disciples have the heart of God, and therefore, regardless of whether the poor person receives the Lord or not, we want to show them mercy and help and grace. Regardless of whether society listens to us, we're going to be a witness for righteousness, but not only that, Paul explains in Ephesians 3 that the church is called to manifest the wisdom of God through the cross to the universe. In other words, to angels, fallen angels, demons, to all of those watching, all right, in the spiritual world, that we are to demonstrate the wisdom of God.

Part of this is by Jew and Gentile becoming one in Jesus. Part of this is by the church functioning as the church in this world. So even though it may not look like, well, we're directly involved in the Great Commission in doing what we're doing, even if that's not the case, and not everything is directly involved in winning the loss of making disciples, right, I mean indirectly if we're honoring the Lord, but not directly, we are still functioning as the church and being witnesses, making a difference in this world and in the spiritual realm and in eternity, or preparing for eternity. And remember that part of our great mission and everything we do is to glorify the Lord, to glorify the Lord to the max. So what this means is that if I can glorify him through my behavior in a difficult time, if I can glorify him by holding to the truth of the gospel, if I can glorify him by raising kids that are godly, if I can glorify him by walking in the Spirit of God, by walking in integrity in the business world, if I can glorify him by refusing to compromise and give way to corruption, if I can glorify him by giving him the credit and the praise, I am fulfilling some of a crucially important mission here on earth. So friends, don't just think, well, if I'm preaching for the pulpit, or if I'm not on the mission field, I'm really not glorifying the Lord during his will.

No, no. Seize every moment and find out how we can glorify him in the here and now, and in doing so, prepare ourselves for the world to come and for eternity. Have that on my heart to share with you. I've been meditating on it.

It helps me to understand that as well. All right, we'll be right back. We'll take some calls, catch up on the news. 866-348-7884 is the number to call.

We'll be right back. This is how we rise up. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on The Line of Fire by calling 866-344-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back, friends, to The Line of Fire, 866-348-7884. We're going to the phones shortly.

Any question you have of any kind, any topic that relates in any way even remotely to what we cover here on The Line of Fire, happy to talk with you. All right, over the weekend, Nancy sent me this text. Many of you know that we found out when I got COVID that I had been in and out of AFib, atrial fibrillation, for some time. I just wasn't aware of it.

We had a hunch something may have been a little funny some months back before COVID, but COVID brought it to the surface. Recently, I had a procedure called an ablation that was successful. I'm out of AFib by God's grace. I trust to stay out of it for life and do everything I know how with healthy diet and lifestyle to contribute to that. Nancy was just researching a little bit more about AFib over the weekend and why people can have this procedure, an ablation done, and then over a period of time, go back into AFib.

That's what we're trusting God will not happen in my case. In any event, she goes to a medical website and it's got your basic subheadings. And one is who does atrial fibrillation affect?

Are you ready? Well, AFib can affect anyone. It's more common among people of European descent. However, black people who have AFib are more likely to have serious complications such as stroke or heart failure. People assigned female at birth, which they abbreviate as AFib, are more commonly diagnosed than people assigned male at birth, which they abbreviate as AMAB. Friends, this is madness. This is some of the cultural madness that we have been sounding the alarm about for years and years and years.

This is a medical website, a medical website. Instead of saying males and females, females and males, no, people assigned female at birth and people assigned male at birth. I remember when doing research for Queer Thing Happened to America, which I worked on from 2005 to 2011.

So massive research, lots of interaction with those who identify as LGBTQ plus doing my best to understand perspectives firsthand. I remember when I first came across these terms, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, I laughed. I thought, what kind of nonsense is this?

I mean, it was so ridiculous. The doctor's like, well, I'm going to assign you male. No, that's a male. That's a biological male.

I'm going to assign you female. No, that is a biological female. We're not talking about the less than 1% who are intersex, who have a biological or chromosomal abnormality and who should be treated with great compassion understanding because of the delicate and difficult things that they've had to live through. We're talking about the 99% plus who are biologically and chromosomally through their body, every cell of their body, either male or female. And that's why during the ultrasound, it's a boy, it's a girl. Not, well, it looks like we'll assign this one male at birth or assign this one female at birth.

No, it's a boy or it's a girl. I mean, adding to the madness here is that this is an article about AFib. So AFib can affect AFib and AMAB people.

This is beyond insane. This is dangerous because someone comes into a hospital and rush into the emergency room and they're just able to communicate and say, yeah, someone saw a male. Okay, right. Well, you think they're a male? No, they identify as male.

Well, you could hurt them treating them as a male when they're actually female. There was one case about an obese man with terrible stomach pains. By the time they figured out it was a pregnant woman, the baby was lost. This happened, what, within the last couple of years in a hospital.

I talked to a nurse in England and she said, I defy the hospital on this. I don't tell them. But when the patient who's obviously identifying as opposite to their biological reality says I'm male, she just writes down female.

Well, because she wants the person to be treated properly and you don't treat a man exactly the same as a woman in every single case. Oh, just a little bit more and then go to the phones. Oh, let's see. Which headline should we start with?

How about this? This is from England. Mayoral candidate Maureen Martin allegedly fired over Christian views on marriage. Plans to sue. So here she is, candidate for mayor. She worked with the London and Quadrant Housing Trust. She was fired.

Why? Well, because she put out her her six-point plan for being mayor. The third point in her plan was a promise to cut through political correctness and state the truth that natural marriage between a man and a woman is the fundamental building block for a successful society and the safest environment for raising children. Well, she works for the London and Quadrant Housing Trust and there were complaints over this. And when you get complaints, you've got to fire the person.

It's that simple. So she's called in to meet with them. It was a real inquisition. They had received three complaints.

Count them. Not that she ever mistreated anyone. Not that she was unfair to anyone ever. Not there's not reported, but her positions made people uncomfortable. She was challenged about one tweet in which he had commented on transgender sport. Good for her.

And another in which she retreated a comment by the CPA that it was, quote, disgusting for the U.S. Embassy at the Vatican to display the rainbow LGBTQ plus flag. I agree. I agree. It's disgusting to do that at the Vatican.

I agree. So they said, hey, your views are your views, but look, you're linked to us and therefore you're going to bring us into disrepute. She said she was fired.

She was shocked by being fired and, of course, is suing the company. Now, when people say, hey, how does the person I marry affect you? Here's a perfect example. Once you codify the one thing as law, you now codify people that differ with it as bigots.

Oh, how about this? My friend Mike Winger posted this on Twitter. It was from Women's Voices. Norwegian feminist Christina Ellingson is facing a prison sentence of up to three years for stating that men can neither be lesbians nor mothers. You can't defend women if you can't define what a woman is, she said. So Mike retweeted it. She says men can't be girls, mothers or women. She's facing up to three years in prison for saying it.

Men can't be girls, mothers or women. Is this my last tweet? Well, Mike's still there on Twitter.

He didn't get banned yet. So I said, what? But that's on Fox News and Tucker Carlson. It doesn't matter whether you like Tucker Carlson or Fox News. He's reporting accurately what's happening.

We've documented cases in Finland. Read my read my book, The Silencing of the Lambs. If you think a drop of this is exaggerated or it's Chicken Little saying the sky's falling, read The Silencing of the Lambs. Get through the first couple of chapters and tell me I'm not speaking out enough.

That's what you do when you finish. In Finland, a parliamentarian has gone to jail for six years for making positive statements about the meaning of marriage and differences between genders and sexes and things like that. I'm going to shout this out.

A man who identifies as a woman and is attracted to a woman is not a lesbian and a woman who identifies as a man and has a baby is not a man. How's that? Is that clear? You sound hateful. I sound grieved. I sound burdened. I hate the fact that people struggle in these areas.

I hate the fact that someone listening to me is going to say, you don't understand. You are not my body. I'm not in your body, but I'm not in your body.

I'm not in your body, but I'm telling you, if you're a biological male, no amount of sex change, surgery and hormones will ever make you into a female ever. How about this headline? Trans inmate, 27, who impregnated two women at New Jersey jail is moved to men's prison, being held in vulnerable unit, new facility and complains she was misgendered and beaten by corrections officers during transfer. I certainly hope she wasn't beaten. If so, that's inexcusable. But the misgendering is in this article calling him. She, a she does not impregnate other women.

Let me say that again. A she does not impregnate other women. A he does. This is a biological male who identifies as female being put in a women's prison, obviously attracted to women, had sex with women according to this impregnated them. Of course, they don't belong there. You say, well, they get mistreated in a men's prison. Then you have to have a war just for transgender people, something like that to try to help them in prison. But you do not put a biological male in a prison full of biological females. It's cruel to them.

It is cultural madness. How about this? Another headline, former college athletes take stand against Leah Thomas's nomination for woman of the year war. NCAA, adding to its madness, has nominated Will, known as Leah Thomas, a biological male who smashed records of biological females while competing against them this last year in college, has been nominated for woman of the year. Is that any less mad than calling Bruce Caitlyn Jenner woman of the year by Glamour magazine and on and on? The madness continues. How about this?

One more. Biden administration's CDC, Centers for Disease Control, encourages teachers to use leftist gender curriculum. This is the CDC saying, hey, gotta use preferred gender pronouns.

Oh, by the way, the WHO, the World Health Organization, said it's very difficult to define what a woman is. Let us keep raising our voices until the madness is recognized as madness. Otherwise, our culture is self-destruct. I'm warning as loudly as I can friends. Back to your calls.

We're going straight to the phones on the other side of the break. 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 friends for joining us on The Line of Fire. 866-34-TRUTH. Okay. I said I was going straight to the phones, but I've got a graphic ready for you.

I want to put this up. All right. So for those listening, I'm going to describe it.

For those watching, you'll think, what in the world? All right. So on the left of the picture facing us is Richard Levine, who is known now as Rachel Levine, a biological male who identifies as a female who is the president's appointee to deputy secretary for health and human services.

All right. We're deputy assistant secretary for health and human services. And a four-star admiral was hailed as the first woman to be a four-star admiral. The problem is, is a man. There's a male next to Levine is the gentleman who is over nuclear waste for the Biden administration. Obviously another important position. You say man, the person's wearing a dress like Richard Levine is correct because he is also a drag queen who has also been in.

Well, let's just say that this is not your normal heterosexual. We'll leave it there. These are appointees to the administration and these are representatives of America to other countries. What is the Muslim world thinks about this? What do you think some of the conservative Christian parts of the world think about this?

This is our administration. I would love for these two people to really come to know the Lord. I would love for them to experience the kindness and grace of God. I would love for them to understand what it means to be created in the image of God and how everything they've ever done wrong has been covered by the blood of Jesus if they will only turn for mercy.

And I'm sure that these individuals have very positive characteristics and qualities in many areas of life except they are radically wrong in their self-identification and as public representatives for America make us a laughing stock. I'm just being plain friends. Did you honestly think if I told you this was going to happen 10 years ago, and by the way, I didn't explicitly predict this, but if I told you this was going to happen, would you believe me?

Even looking at the picture, you'd think, no, no, this is doctored, but it's not doctored. All right, 866-348-7884. Let's go to the phones.

We'll start with Greg in Cary, in Cary, North Carolina. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hello, Dr. Brown. First of all, I'd like to say that your new theme song, I really like it.

I like the other one too, but I really like the new one too, just as much or more than I did the other one. Well, thank you. And the question I have is that I was wondering how integral prayer is for someone to pray for someone for salvation. And because I said something to somebody, I said, I just wonder who prayed for me before I got saved, because nobody in my family was saved really. And the person said, you don't have to have somebody pray for you. And I was like, well, I've kind of heard that people pray for people a lot of times to get saved. So I was thinking, you know, it seems like, so I just didn't know how integral, because I've never really read it in the Bible that I can recall where it says anything directly about that.

Right. So let me ask you this, Greg. Generally speaking, what role do you think prayer plays in what happens in this world? In other words, if we pray, will it make a difference? If we don't pray, will things still happen the same way? What's your view on that? Oh, I believe in God's divine will and his divine that regardless, yeah, I see what you're getting at now, I guess. No, no, no, no, I don't, I don't mean that as a leading question. I'm trying to understand what you do believe. In other words, if we all pray, if God calls us to pray across the earth, right, and the church responds powerfully in prayer, will the results look different than if God calls us to pray and we don't pray?

Will the results be different? Well, I believe that prayer is very important. I do believe it's important, but I believe that... Go ahead, sir. No, no, no, no, go ahead.

There's not a setup. I'm trying to flesh this out with you. Yeah, I do. I believe that prayer is very important. I believe that prayer can, I mean, it was the one Old Testament prophet that prayed and had Tom turn back, I believe, and I can't remember which one it was. It was, was it... Yeah, it's Isaiah with King Hezekiah.

Here, let me give you a couple of examples. The end of Ezekiel 22, God says that he was looking for someone to stand in a gap and pray and intercede for the nation, but when he couldn't find anyone, he destroyed the nation. In Psalm 107, it says that he was about to destroy Israel, had not Moses stood in the breach and interceded. So the way God works is he is working with us, meaning James, Jacob, the fourth chapter.

You don't have, because you don't ask, and then when you do ask, you ask wrongly to consume things under your own lust. So the way God has set it up is he works with our prayers, meaning if he says, Jeremiah 18, I'm going to bless a nation, right? I'm going to do good to this nation and bless it. This is a principle he gives in Jeremiah 18. If I'm going to bless a nation and that nation instead turns and does evil, then instead of blessing, I'll curse it. Now, conversely, he says, if I decide to curse a nation and they turn to me and repent, then I'll bless.

So in the same way, many of us know 2 Chronicles 7 14, when he says to the people of Israel, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, seek my faith, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and restore their land. So the point, Greg, is that God works with our prayers. In other words, that's what our sovereign God has decided to do. So he can do whatever he wants at any time.

He doesn't need us. But as John Wesley taught, as Charles Spurgeon taught, asking is the law of the kingdom. And many things God will not do unless we ask him to. So that being said, does that mean that every single person had someone pray for them by name? By name?

Not necessarily. But 1 Timothy 2, Paul calls us to pray for kings, for rulers, others in authority, that they may come to the knowledge of salvation because God wants everyone saved. I know for a fact people prayed me into the kingdom. I know who prayed. I'm sure there may have been people I didn't know about, but I know the people who prayed for me.

And I know how God convicted me of sin and saved me. Afterwards, I found out how many were praying for me, and some prayed for me every day of their lives for decades until they went to be with the Lord. Generally speaking, if you'll suddenly see a whole bunch of people coming to faith, there's been a lot of prayer, maybe for the region, maybe for that age group, maybe just people praying as the Holy Spirit leads. So in your case, it may have been that a church was doing outreach and people were praying, or there was a believer at work that was praying, God, save people at my job.

I remember teenagers during the Brownsboro revival, they would sob at incest session, Jesus, save our schools, save our schools. So as kids from those schools got saved, that was some of the fruit of their prayer. So God can save whomever he wants, however he wants, whenever he wants, but generally speaking, he works in conjunction with our prayers and our obedience. Just like, for example, he can save people sovereignly.

They have a dream and in the dream, they hear a gospel message and then they go to a church and find out the rest and come to the Lord. But normally, the method is that someone shares the gospel with us, right? He doesn't send an angel to preach to us, he sends a person.

So he works with us and through us. So while you may not know specifically who prayed for you, I do believe that someone somewhere was praying in your direction, so to say, and whether they knew you firsthand or not, can't prove it, but it's the general pattern. So I gave a long answer just because it ties in with the bigger prayer question. Well that's great, I appreciate it.

Yeah, one last thing. How did you come to faith? Well, I do know, I think I do have a possibility to question someone I think may have prayed for me. It was a pastor of a church here in Raleigh, or in Raleigh, that son was going to school with me and he was witnessing to me, and I was the first person that ever really witnessed to me in high school. And I think he might have been praying for me, that's not my guess, but he witnessed to me, and then I got saved actually in the service. I went to the base chapel and I accepted Jesus, but I don't believe that true conversion happened until I actually got to my permanent duty station, and I was so down and depressed, and I was so down in the dumps, and I went to the chapel, I just found myself at the chapel, and then the chaplains talked to me, and I don't even remember what he said, but I just remember him asking if I wanted to pray, I said yes. And we prayed, and I felt like the whole weight was lifted off me, it was like amazing. Yeah, it's real.

It was unbelievable. But I just wanted to comment one more real quick comment, I really appreciate your answer, it really helped me out. But you know, I've talked to you, I mean not to be bringing up, that I've talked to you in the past about, one of my favorite stories, I love the interaction between Jesus and Zacchaeus. I've talked to you about Zacchaeus before, and I just wonder, you know, because you know, Matthew, I'd ask you if you knew him, if you think he knew Zacchaeus, and you said you didn't know, and we don't know because it doesn't say, but you know, I just, I wonder, because you know, Jesus said he had to come through to Jericho, he had to come through Jericho, he must come through there. That's when it started saying in the very first verse of Luke 19, and I just think that, I just wonder if it was Jesus' appointment, or whether Matthew may have said something, may have brought it up. I mean, I know that it was, they still, because I know Jesus had asked them, can you not pray with me? Because they asked the disciples to pray, because he was like, could you not just pray with me one hour? So it's not a matter of him talking to Jesus as being in prayer, but I just wondered if maybe, you know, and I know you said, we'll find out on the other side, we'll find out on the other side.

In fact, we don't know. Obviously, you assume Matthew, with the crowd, with Jesus on the day, and Luke 19, would have seen what happened with Zacchaeus, but were they friends, were they colleagues, because they've been tax collectors, did they know each other beyond that? We don't know, because Scripture doesn't tell us that, but it was definitely a divine appointment for Jesus to go through Jericho. Do I think Matthew set up? No, no, that was the route he had to go. In any case, thanks for the call, and it would make perfect sense to me that whoever shared the Gospel with you also witnessed for you.

That was always my habit. Any new person I met shared the Gospel, especially kids in school, I prayed for them, prayed for them regularly. Hey, God bless Greg, so great to have you in God's kingdom. We'll be right back. All right, I just got an update on our Israel trip, May 2023, just the first count of those who registered since they got the invitation last week. You saw, I didn't get an invitation.

That means you don't get my emails. That means you don't know about all these videos that we've got on sale, half price. I just saw a slew of people ordering classes. I didn't realize we were cutting all of our online classes in half, and these great video classes we recorded. So I just found out my self that we were doing that because I'm on our email list. So get on there today, ask Dr. Brown, ASKDRBrown.org.

Stay informed. Friends, all the material that we're putting out, all the videos, all the articles every week is for you. It's to build you up.

It's to get free content in your hands so you can be strong on the front lines because we're under attack these days. And friends, we want you to be so healthy that yokes of bondage and deception and misunderstanding just fall off of you because of the health and vitality of your own walk with the Lord. That's our heart. That's our goal. That's our vision. And then a healthy church will shine brightly in this society. A healthy church will provoke Israel to envy.

This is God's heart. We're seeking to do our best to help. So get our emails, ASKDRBrown.org, and then go to the website when you sign up for the emails, click on the Israel tour. Now is the time to sign up. We don't know if we're going to bring one bus or two buses. And it could be that when we get to the end, one bus, we just stop there.

It depends on how long it takes to fill that first bus. And so the sooner you register, the better. I know it's a big decision and a lot going on, but the sooner you do it, the better it is the trip of a lifetime. There's this anticipation I have to be at certain sites with you as you, as you take in things for the first time. And it's just, it's glorious. It's wonderful.

It's beautiful. So go to the website ASKDRBrown.org, check out the Israel trip, tell your friends. Maybe they've been wanting to go.

It's going to be May 2023. All right. Do I tell this story or not? Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to tell the story.

I'm going to tell the story. For those of you who understand different aspects of intercession, who can relate to what Paul said about being in spiritual travail for the Galatians, as if he was in childbirth for them, spiritually speaking, for those who can relate to praying with tears or what Paul speaks of in Romans 8 with groans that can't be articulated in human speech, this would make more sense to you. For those to whom these are foreign concepts, keep looking at the word and see if this might be part of what scripture talks about by being burdened and carrying the pain and weight of a dying world or of people in need in the body. So this was in spring of 1983. So I came to faith in 71.

This is now spring of 83. And I was experiencing levels of intercession I had never known before. I would pray and get so burdened. I couldn't even speak articulate words as much as just groan. Oh, oh, the pain. We've all felt that at different times in our lives, right? You can only weep or just sigh or groan because the pain is so great and there are no words, right?

So we're on track with that. Maybe you never experienced it in prayer, but it's certainly something very biblical. So I was overwhelmed groaning in intercession. I felt this tremendous burden and I was just on my face and just gripping my body. I felt just as if it was childbirth but spiritual. Obviously, I don't have a clue to what childbirth is like physically as a man, right?

So ladies, I'm not saying I have a clue about that, all right? I understand that. But spiritually, I felt like I was giving birth to something, but I didn't know what I was praying for. And Paul says in Romans 8 that we don't always know how to pray, but the Spirit makes intercession for us with groans that can't be articulated in human speech.

It's right there, Romans 8, 26, 27. So when I was through praying, because the burden was so intense, I asked the Lord, what was I praying for? And I felt the Spirit say to me, Muslim strongholds in South Africa. And I thought, oh, come on.

Mike Brown, you're crazy. Muslim strongholds in South Africa. Oh, right, sure.

Here I am living in New York, Long Island, a few minutes from Kennedy Airport, like five minutes from Kennedy Airport on Long Island. And, oh yeah, and I'm praying, God's leading me to pray for Muslim strongholds in South Africa. It seemed preposterous. I'm sharing this because the previous call about prayer for salvation. So I thought, number one, the Muslim strongholds are in North Africa, right?

The Sudan and Egypt and for the North, South Africa is not loaned for its Islamic population. That's one thing. And why would God lead me now to pray for that? It was so random.

Okay. But I couldn't deny how real the prayer was, how deep it was, and how much it was in harmony with other prayers I had prayed in recent weeks, where I felt tremendously gripped to pray for a person in the same way. I couldn't articulate it in human words, but overwhelmed to pray for that person. And then we went to minister to them. They were wonderfully, gloriously set free.

So I remembered it, filed it away, but it still seemed odd. And look, we can think we're hearing the Lord and we're not. So one year later, a little over a year later, I'm in a meeting in Oklahoma. And for the first time, I'm hearing Reinhard Bonnke speak. He went to be with the Lord a couple of years ago. Extraordinary man of God, German evangelist whose life calling was to evangelize Africa. And at that time, he was at that time, I guess he's in his early forties, preaching with fire and passion and talking about what had happened one year earlier in South Africa.

Well, that got my ears, South Africa, one year earlier. So at that time they had the world's largest tent. He described it as a monstrosity because it was so massive, required so many trucks to transport it, required so many workers to put it up. It seated 34,000 people. Now I've been under big tents that seat a few thousand. I could not imagine a tent that seated 34,000, but that's what they had then. And their meetings were getting bigger and bigger and they could fill this tent. This is before they had meetings of hundreds of thousands or even all over a million in single meetings. And they have, it's all documented.

So when I say documents, I mean, carefully count it with crowd sizes, well, well over a million at the largest. In any case, Bonnke says, and this is now spring of 83, he's talking about a summer of 84, spring of 83. And he's given the dates, the timeframe that he said local Muslims and local witch doctors came and said, we don't want you having meetings here. We don't want your tent because there's rainy season. They were going to hold meetings outdoors in the rain.

So we, they said, we don't want your, your meetings going on. And we're putting a curse on your tent because they had it set up getting ready for the meetings. Well, not long after that terrible storm blew in, ripped the tent into little pieces, this giant blue tent and scattered the pieces from miles around.

Looked like a victory for the kingdom of darkness over the kingdom of light. Then Bonnke's team starts getting reports of people who get the little pieces of tent, just like handkerchiefs and stuff were taken from Paul as he was working. And, and demons left people and the sick were healed when they were brought to them. Well, people were getting the blue tent and maybe they knew where it came from. In any case, they were, they're putting on sick people and they were getting healed and delivered.

So that's the first testimony that came. Second, there was a local mosque. Terrible storm blew the roof off that. But what do they do? They don't have, they don't have tent.

It's rainy season. Well, they felt led to go on with the meetings and, and it required massive prayer. The woman who led the prayer told me, Mike, you had to see it with your own eyes. We'd see a massive storm coming our way and it would stop until the meetings were over. Well, it ended up that they drew crowds of 80 to 90,000 people.

They couldn't fit under the tent. 80 to 90,000 people. And Bankei said many were saved. There were signs and wonders and many were saved, among whom were thousands of Muslims. Now, they were not what you call fanatical Muslims or super devout Muslims, but they were Muslims. Some of them more religious than others. And he said thousands of Muslims were saved in South Africa in those meetings.

That was the highlight to him. And as he's saying, I think, wait a second. Just days before that is when I was groaning and travailing in prayer for the salvation of Muslims, praying against Muslim strongholds in South Africa and praying for the salvation of Muslims in South Africa. That's what I felt the Spirit told me I was praying for. And I thought it must have been that around the world God laid his hands on praying people to have us pray for Muslim strongholds in South Africa.

And here, a matter of days, weeks later, these events unfold and thousands of Muslims come to faith in South Africa. That was a big learning experience for me, friends. And I have learned over the years to go with the burden, even when I don't fully understand what I'm praying for. If I feel burdened and I'm overcome with weeping and groaning and sense this deep solidarity with God, this deep fellowship with the Lord and know that I'm co-working with him, co-laboring with him, then I get to understand. And then over time, I understand what I was praying for. But friends, go with the burden. You never know whose life will be affected. Friends, we've got a powerful interview coming your way tomorrow. Be sure not to miss it. Another program powered by the Truth Network.