Awakening from Our Stupor

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. It is time, friends, for the Church to wake up from its stupor. 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. Welcome, welcome, friends, to the Line of Fire.

This is Michael Brown back at my home away from home in Dallas, Texas. We'll be here in Texas all this week. First, three days at Christ for the Nations Institute, then two days at Spiritual Leadership School in Fort Worth. What a delight to be with the student body at CFNI, hungry, thirsty for many nations around the world.

So it brings joy to my heart and it is great to be with each of you. Same phone number to call as always. 866-34-TRUTH.

866-348-7884. Do I have your permission to shoot straight today? Do I have your permission to tell it like it is? Do I have your permission to speak the truth in love, even if it's not what everybody wants to hear? Well, I hope so because I have God's permission to do it.

So that's exactly what I'm going to do. And I believe if you're listening, you're not listening to have your ears tickled, not to this broadcast, not to yours truly, not to the Line of Fire. You're here to be confronted with truth. You're here for me to talk through the controversial issues as your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity and to infuse you with faith and truth and courage and not to cater to people's opinions. I do not want to offend you in myself. I do not want to be offensive by being hypocritical or self-righteous or judgmental or mean-spirited or lacking in compassion or wisdom. I don't want to offend you by being me in the flesh. But if the truth offends, let it offend. If the truth challenges us, let it challenge us. Is that fair enough?

That's what I want. When I asked my wife Nancy to talk to me about something that I've written, she may hurt my feelings. In fact, most of the time she does.

Because if it's 10 pages long and she thinks it's tremendous, but I've got a couple of bad paragraphs, that's what's all highlighted in red. And that's what she wants me to fix. And that's why I asked her. When our daughters were younger, maybe they were teenagers and they'd put on an outfit and they'd say, Mom, does this make me look fat?

She'd go, yes. I'd go, Mom, you hurt my feelings and she's willing to don't ask me. If you don't ask, I won't tell you. But if you ask, I'm going to tell you the truth.

So is that fair enough? I am not your life coach. I am not here to give an inspirational message every day just to put a smile on your face and make you feel better and get through the day.

There are others that do that. I'm here to break down the difficult cultural, moral, societal issues from a biblical perspective and to speak the truth in love. All right, so all that is the intro. A new book is officially out today. You can order it on Amazon. The e-book got delayed.

It should be up there any day, but you can order it now. If you've read the book already, if you got an advanced copy, you can post a review on Amazon. We'd encourage you to do that if the book blessed you.

Also, take a picture of it, show yourself with it on social media, talk about it. I believe it's a critically important message, the political seduction of the church, how millions of American Christians have confused politics with the gospel. All right, I've been talking about these themes increasingly for a number of weeks as we get closer, but I'm going to go back through some history today and not everybody's going to like it. In fact, when I began to address some of the issues surrounding the 2020 elections, the way some believers, it's as if their whole world crumbled when it seemed that Donald Trump was not reelected.

And I say this as a Trump voter, right? When I saw the chorus of prophecies that did not come to pass and people not willing to be accountable for them, when I saw people moving into a fantasy realm, when I saw the embrace of QAnon conspiracy theories. When I began to address those within a couple of days, I didn't count exactly, but I noticed it pretty quickly.

We probably lost 10,000 people on our Facebook page within a couple of days. And some of them, Dr. Brown, I've been following you for years, but that's it. I'm out of here. And you're weak or you've gone left or you're woke or you're a communist or a rhino, you know, a Republican in name only. I'm not a Republican anyway.

I'm an independent who largely votes Republican. But in any case, it was shocking to see the reaction. Oh, and I've got a few pages in the political seduction of the church where I go through the very things that were posted by believers on my social media accounts. I mean, you, you would not believe you think I'm making this stuff up. It was that ugly for daring to address some of the things I've addressed. So please hear me. I'm going to go back through history and talk about this.

All right. First, let me give another side of the story. For those of you who say, how could you be a Christian and a Trump supporter? The man was vile. The man was nasty. The man was divisive. The man was narcissistic. He had such an immoral past.

He was a wheeler dealer. He was not Christian in any way. How could you as a Christian vote for him? Let me explain that first. All right, because I may end up offending people on all sides today. That's not my goal. My goal is to get us focused on Jesus. My goal is to help us see where we, we, the body of Christ, we, I'm not saying you, I'm saying we, made serious mistakes. Where and how we hurt our witness and how we can get things done better now while staying involved in politics.

I'm not saying we should drop out. We should be involved. Did not Jesus say that you are the salt of the earth, his disciples, and the light of the world? If we're not involved in politics, then where is the salt? Where is the moral conscience?

Where is the preservative? If we're not shining brightly in politics too, where is the light? It's just more and more darkness. We should be involved in every area of society where there's an open door. And those things that are all out sinful, that are totally sinful themselves, our job there is to shine a lot of the gospel and bring people to Jesus. But for those who say, how could you possibly vote for Donald Trump? Because I'm going to be talking about the other side a lot here in a moment. How did you possibly vote for him? It really came down to some very, very simple things.

In our view, there was an existential battle over some fundamentally important issues here in America. In our minds, there is no sin greater than the shedding of innocent blood. You know, I was just watching an African-American pastor talking about this the other day, only so the beginning of his talk.

A big Baptist church, and he's just talking and saying, hey, I'm just telling the truth about this. And he reads from Proverbs 6 how God hates the shedding of innocent blood. He says, that's abortion. Whether you like it or not, that's abortion. He said, the world says, you know, woman's body, her choice, you don't have a right to tell the woman what to do with her body.

Instead of using the response I use, which is what about the body within her body? He had an even stronger answer. He said, God has a right to tell the woman what to do with her body.

He was pulling no punches, all right? For us, that was the number one paramount issue in God's sight, that he hates the shedding of innocent blood, and that there's no more innocent blood being shed than in abortion. And since Donald Trump would be so radically different than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden on abortion, that was a major, major factor for us.

That was a life and death major factor. We felt our religious liberties were under direct attack, and that the preservation of our liberties as a constitutional right and for the good of the coming generations was massively, massively important. And therefore, when we knew that President Trump was going to fight for us, which he did, and he came through in his pro-life promises also, more than any other president in the pro-abortion, the post Roe v. Wade era, all right, did more to change things than Ronald Reagan did, or that George H.W.

Bush did, or George W. Bush. The same with religious liberties. He fought for us, and we knew that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden were on the opposite side with that, as we're witnessing now under President Biden. That was massively important to us. We also felt that standing with Israel was very important, that standing against the Iran nuclear deal was very important, that pushing back against world terrorism was very important, that standing up to Communist China was very important. We also felt that Trump would do a better job in terms of some of the family issues, LGBTQ plus activism and things like that. And these were biggies, very, very big. They remained big issues to me to this moment.

And therefore, even though we didn't like a lot of Trump's characteristics and the way he would throw people under the bus and demonize people in this divisiveness, these are existential issues. You're in a world war, and the enemy is invading your country. And there's one general who's a very nice person and very civil and never uses profanity and never drinks and is nice to the people that work with him, and they all really like him and his family likes him. But he's not good in terms of military strategy. And you've got another general who's nasty, who smokes and drinks.

His own family doesn't like him, but he will win a war. That's the guy that you put in charge to win that war. That's how many of us felt.

We felt it was existential. And therefore, for the good of the nation, for the future of the nation, and also in the midst of dirty politics, in the midst of biased media, we thought we need someone who will fight and who will fight for us. And therefore, we voted for him. I don't believe that was the mistake that many millions of American Christians made.

I do not believe that voting for Trump was the mistake. I fully respect those who say, sorry, I can't vote for him for the following reasons. I fully respect that. I do not respect those who say, I'm going to vote Democrat and I'm pro-life, I'm going to vote Democrat and I'm pro-felon, I'm going to vote Democrat and I'm pro all these things. That I have an issue with, right?

I'm just shooting straight with you. I have an issue with that. Oh, I'm not judging your salvation or your walk with God. I'm saying if you're voting knowingly for candidates that are pro-abortion, knowingly voting for candidates that are pro-gay activism and transgender activism, knowingly voting for candidates that are going to stand against their religious liberties, I have an issue with them. But I don't believe the problem was voting for Trump. I believe the problem was how we looked to him and how we became like him and how we mixed politics with the gospel to the point of marrying the holy with the unholy.

That was a major error. Hey, you can talk to me. 866-348-7884 if you differ, if you want to weigh in, if you agree, you can talk to me.

We're just getting started. 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, friends, to The Line of Fire broadcast. You get to interact with me if you like, whether you agree or disagree. You might be fuming. Well, give me a call. Let it out.

866-344-TRUTH. You might be saying, preach it, man. Amen. This needs to be heard. All I know is, before people even got hold of the political seduction book, the moment they heard the title, they wrote to me, leaders, different believers, and said, thank you. This needed to be addressed.

Thank you. We had to talk about this. All right, so my issue is not with this voting for Donald Trump. I understand the reasons why I did in 2016 and 2020. And given what I knew then, all right, so prior to the elections, I would do the same thing. I would do the same thing if I was reliving things based on what I knew up to that point. All right, so all along, though, I raised concerns.

If you followed me over the years, you know that. In 2018, I wrote the book, Donald Trump is Not My Savior. This was as a Trump voter because I wanted to shout out to the world, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, only Jesus. Now you say to me, Mike Brown, you are not being fair because none of us worshiped Donald Trump, because none of us thought Donald Trump died for our sins, because none of us made him into a god. Well, do you think that when we talk about idolatry, that I mean that you had like a portrait of Donald Trump in your home and you bow down to it as a fan?

Let's all pray to our leader now. Do you think that I thought that there was any church in the world that took communion in the name of Trump or that sang hymns to Trump who died for it? No, obviously not.

Obviously not. Idolatry is much more subtle than that. But something happened along the way where he went from the man we voted for, some of us with trepidation, some of us said, you know, we held our noses, we voted, especially in 2016, we didn't know what to expect. We were hoping, but we didn't know what to expect. That we went from that to making him into some type of political superhero because he did what others just didn't do. And he was bold and he stood up and he kept his promises. He did many exceptional, extraordinary things. I'm grateful for that. Roe v. Wade would not have been overturned without Donald Trump.

That's massive. That's the truth. At the same time, we began to look to him in unhealthy ways to the point of him becoming a political savior. I heard Christian leaders to this day saying he's the only one that can save America. And we're not electing a pastor, we're electing a president. Missing the point of what went wrong.

Missing the point. And I really prayed for anointing and wisdom right in this book to point us in the right direction. I'm going to do that as we go on in the show. I believe at the end, even if I ruffled some feathers, you're going to be encouraged when we're done. I believe at the end of the broadcast, you're going to say, okay, I'm with you as a follower of Jesus. I'm with you. If you're not a follower of Jesus, I don't know where we'll land, but ultimately I want you to be a follower of Jesus.

That's the biggest thing. Alright, so when I wrote Donald Trump is not my savior, I then had a subtitle. An evangelical leader speaks his mind about the man he supports as president. So I supported him as president.

That's subtitled. But what I'm shouting to the world is I'm a Jesus follower. I'm a Jesus follower. I'm a Jesus follower. And I will not compromise my ethic and my commitment to Jesus to support a political candidate.

Alright? And at the end of the book, I had seven points that we needed to follow if we were going to get things right moving forward. Then in 2020, before the elections, I put out evangelicals at the crossroads. Will we pass the Trump test? What was the Trump test?

These were words I was using. So what did I mean by the Trump test? Number one, can we vote for Donald Trump without destroying our witness in the process? Number two, can we unite around Jesus even if we divide over Trump? How did we do on those two points? Failed miserably. Listen, the left is going to attack us.

I understand that. The left-leaning media is going to attack us. They're going to make all of us, especially if we're white, into white supremacists, insurrectionists, Christian nationalists wanting to take over the country in a violent way.

That's how they're going to paint a picture. If you voted for Donald Trump, you're going to be demonized. Even if you're black and you voted for Donald Trump, somehow you're going to be a white supremacist. I mean, I'm not worried about what those say who mock our values and stand against us and have a very different agenda. I'm not going to win them in this argument. I want to win them to the Lord, but they're going to have their perspective.

I'm not responding to that. I'm not trying to please those that reject fundamental values that I hold to. Do you think for a second, if I said, I now regret that I voted for Donald Trump, do you think that CNN or MSNBC or all these other outlets would now say, oh, and Dr. Brown, please tell us why you oppose abortion? Oh, and Dr. Brown, please tell us why you don't recognize same-sex marriage as being valid.

Oh, and Dr. Brown, please tell us why you stand against transgender activism. No, they'd still consider me a radical. They'd still consider me a dangerous fundamentalist.

They'd still brand me falsely. All right. So I'm not going to I'm not trying to impress those.

All right. I want to win them to the Lord that you change their perspective on different issues, but I'm not trying to impress them. But I watch friends with my own eyes. And if we're honest, you remember this, too. I watched this with my own eyes. I watched Christian believers on social media pages and in personal conversations get far more passionate about defending Donald Trump than they were about defending Jesus. I watched people much more identified with the political party and a political agenda and MAGA than they were identified with the cause of Christ. I mean, they were shouting it to the world. We are MAGA. They are shouting it to the world.

Trump is our man. And oh, yeah, and we're Christians. That was kind of like subheading. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw believers act like animals towards each other on all sides. On all sides. I watched it daily.

I watched people get consumed with QAnon conspiracy theories. I had ministers of the gospel guaranteeing me. I'm I'm not like God is my witness, guaranteeing me that Trump would not that Biden would not be inaugurated, that Trump would be inaugurated. Then once Biden was in, it's any month now. It's and it's more. No, no, it's it's April. No, no, it's it's May. No, it's June. No, by August. August is the date the military is going to depose Joe Biden and install Donald Trump and that he is actually ruling and reigning as president from Mar-a-Lago and in heaven. I saw the posts.

I interacted with some of the people. I saw one prophecy after another saying this will happen. The red states, the blue states will turn blue. The blue states will turn red and the judges will overthrow this.

And Trump will be reinstated by this state. And it didn't happen. And they didn't repent. And when I confronted them, they wouldn't talk to me when I tried to reach out to them privately. They wouldn't talk to me. I watched this with my own eyes, friends. I watched good people get obsessed. They were praying more fervently for the elections.

And then they overturned the elections, believing they were stolen, whether they were stolen or not. God knows. I don't know. You don't know for sure.

God knows. That wasn't the issue. It was as if the whole world crumbled. And when I began to address things, friends, I lived this out, OK? When I began to address things graciously, trying to be helpful, to say, OK, look, got all these prophecies.

They haven't come to pass. Trump is not in the White House. No, no, he really is.

And that's not really Biden. It's like, what happens? We're believers. We're followers of Jesus. We're sober minded people. What in the world happened to us when I began to address it? Oh, we're standing.

We're Joshua and Caleb. You're one of the 10 spies full of unbelief. What are you talking about? Oh, you're just weak. Now we know your true colors, Brown.

Now, I don't care about being attacked. My role, though, in the Lord is to be like the dartboard where everybody gets to throw their darts so we can see what's out there. My role, my calling is to be the lightning rod that attracts the criticism and the attack and the junk and the muck and the mark. So you see what's there.

That's part of my role. So I'm grieved, not because I'm being attacked, but because this is in the body. This is the body of Christ. These are my brothers and sisters.

These are people that I love, for whom Jesus died. And we're supposed to be stepping higher. But we're just like the world. We're as divided as the world. Now Trump's strong. We're going to be strong. You've got preachers as mean-spirited and nasty as Trump.

We're not taking on his image, and that's strong. If you try to speak the truth in the level, you're just weak. Why, because I'm not screaming? Because I'm not holding up a gun as I'm talking? Because I'm not wrapped in the American flag standing beyond the pulpit? And I watch this with my own eyes, friends.

I saw the rallies with the preachers saying it's time for the militias to rise now across America, in Jesus' name. I'm watching this happen when I begin to address it now before the inauguration. This is premature. You can't talk about it now.

We don't know what's going to happen. I guarantee you. I knew the beginning of December that Joe Biden would be inaugurated. I knew it during an eight-day prayer retreat.

I waited for the right moment, the day of the storming of the Capitol. That's when I said, it's over. Donald Trump will not be in office. Four years from now, we don't know. But I'm just telling you, he is not going to be inaugurated January 24th. It's not going to happen. I guarantee it. I know it.

I waited until that day to say, well, it's too soon. Don't you talk about it. You're full of unbelief. You're getting it.

So I wait till after January 24th. What do I hear then? It's too soon to bring it up. We're hurting too much. We're hurting too much. We're too sensitive. Okay.

Then I wait a while and I bring it up. Why are you beating a dead horse? So we could never talk about it. We never talk about the issues. We never talk about the failed prophecies.

We could never talk about the churches torn apart over this. I hear from people. I remember running forward for a friend's book, Joe Matera's book about prophecy. And he said, I'm a local pastor.

I quoted him in my forward. He said, I'm a local pastor. He said, we got to pick up the pieces of all these false prophecies.

We've got to pick up the pieces of all the people going off the deep end. I just got an email from a Christian political activist totally on the front lines fighting battles. He said, my church went completely off. The pastor went completely off. He bought into all the false prophecies.

He bought into QAnon. Now he's trying to put another spin on it. This was massive deception. Like I told Ruth Graham from The New York Times, it was the worst deception I'd seen in forty nine years in the war. It happened. How? How? We can't deny it happened.

How did it happen? How can we make sure it never happens again? That's why I'm here, friends.

That's why I wrote the political seduction of the church. We'll be right back. I'm going to go 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. If you'd like to weigh in, if you are listening, watching and you passionately disagree with me and you think I'm missing it and I don't understand, share your thoughts. I'm not trying to bait you into a call. I want folks to hear differences.

I want to give people opportunity to challenge me or to talk things through or to simply air another point of view. If you think, man, this is exactly how I feel. Dr. Brown, you are speaking my heart. You are my voice today. Well, give us a call as well.

I'd love to get your perspective. 866-348-7884 is the number to call. Hey, just a quick note. We have been telling you for weeks now that seating is limited on our Israel tour. We were able to open up some additional hotel rooms and some extra bus space. So seating still is limited, but we just got to move the ceiling up and get some more space. So if you want to go to Israel with us in May 2023, now is the time to sign up because I think we're about to get a flood as we share about the trip. We'll share about the trip in a few different places and then we will hit our limit. But we've got room.

We've got room. We just got news today from Jerusalem that we've got the extra room that we needed for extra hotel rooms, etc. So go to the website AskDrBrown.org. AskDrBrown.org. You'll see it right on the homepage. First you'll see some information about the new book, Political Seduction of the Church, and then you'll see info on the Israel trip. Tell your friends it will be, by God's grace, the trip of a lifetime.

And don't leave the website until you sign up for our emails so we can make sure that we stay in regular contact with you, get you the latest announcements, latest resources, and things like that. Okay, let's go to the phones and then, let me say one last thing before we go to the phones. And then I want to give you a vision of the church. I want to give you a vision of the transcendent calling of the church. I want to paint a picture of how far we transcend politics, how far above politics we are, so how we get involved properly. Alright, just say this and then we will go to Don. So, last week President Biden gave a speech that caused outrage in many circles around America.

Strange background, people refer to the blood red background. And it was terribly divisive. In fact, I was going to play a couple of clips for you, but I'm not going to play those clips today. But terribly divisive language. Language that defamed millions and millions and millions of Americans. Alright, I have for years spoken out when I believe Trump did things that I differed with that I didn't like as a Trump voter. Alright, that I wanted to distance myself from because the most important thing for you and me is not who we vote for, but how we live.

The most important thing for you and me is how is our testimony being kept. If I have to compromise my ethics in order to get someone in office or to stand with a particular person or to do a particular job, then I can't do it. I have to say no to that and yes to the Lord.

That's just the way it works in the kingdom. There are choices you make every day, right? Sorry, I can't do that. Sorry, I won't partake in this.

Why? Because I'm a follower of Jesus. So, when I would say I appreciate what Donald Trump did but I don't like this, I was doing that not to be critical of the man.

Not to always throw darts at him because I voted for him and I was supporting him and I was appreciating what he was doing. But to say, hey, I'm a follower of Jesus and I don't like that and I want to be clear on that. So, just imagine now if prominent Christians across America stood up for Joe Biden's speech. How would that make Jesus look to other Americans? How would it make them as ministers of the gospel look? It would make them look partisan.

It would make them look compromised. Well, that's what happened with Christian leaders across America. Now, I know for a fact that some of the pastors who were on the president's faith advisory council were anything but yes men. You didn't hear them speaking publicly about the president but you heard them speaking privately if you were there to his face and challenging him and even rebuking him. I know this for a fact out of the horse's mouth, not the president's mouth.

I don't think he knows me from Adam. But some that were very close to him and others who said, oh yeah, I heard those interactions. But the public, to the extent that we rallied around a man and were known as Trump, Trump, Trump, it hurt our witness. You said, well, what about when we rally around for pro-life? Pro-life is pro-life. We're standing for the life of the unborn. That's pro-life. But when we're standing for a candidate for a party, it's all mixed.

There's flesh mixed in with it. And then when we exalt that prison, put our hope and everyone out there, that's the end of the churches. No, nonsense. It used to be that everything was weighed by what we did with Jesus. Then it became, in the recent election cycle, everything was weighed by what we did with Trump. In one camp, if you voted for Trump, you weren't saved.

In the other camp, if you didn't vote for Trump, you weren't saved. Then think, what do we do? We're believers.

What matters is Jesus, what we do with Jesus. All right, you've heard me say that, but I'm going to say it again. Let's go to the phones then. We'll start with Don in North Carolina. Welcome to the Line of Fire.

Yeah, hi. I really like the fact you wrote that book, and it explains exactly what happened, I guess. I haven't read it with Trump. My feeling is then, as a political science major in college, is we would analyze, you know, why did this happen? Why did self-respecting, Christ-fearing people become this way? I mean, have we become that desperate? Are we that scared of the left that we felt we needed to attach ourselves to this? Why did this phenomena just take off? I mean, these are regular...we had people from our church actually get on a bus, you know, and go to Washington, and it just was amazing. It's like we're scared of all of this media stuff.

We hear it day in and day out when we're getting preached to on Sunday, that these things aren't Christ, exactly what you said. But somehow, we just felt like this was our last resort. We needed to hang on to this.

We needed to push it. That's all I have. Thank you. Yeah, Don, I appreciate that. And these are questions that we have to ask.

The only reason I raise these things is to be constructive. It's not to say, I told you so, because I voted for Trump twice, and I don't like the way that we got...hang on, let me just drop Don there. I don't like the way we ultimately behaved around him. So I voted for him. In that sense, I'm part of the problem. But based on everything I knew up until the 2020 elections, I still felt that was the right choice.

And if I was back in that time, without further hindsight, I'd say it was the right choice to vote the way I voted. But let me ask you a question. Let's come at it from this angle. And then I want to share some edifying, upbuilding things. Tomorrow, by the way, Jonathan Cahn's new book, The Return of the Gods, comes out. Many of you love Jonathan's books.

Some haven't read them or have a different view. But he gets swamped with interviews. So he contacts me months in advance and says, hey, would you like to have me on when the book comes out? So he honors the line of fire by giving us an interview on the day the book comes out for a full hour.

So tomorrow's going to be a pretty intense show. And then we've got Thursday, and then you've got questions we've got answers Friday. So I'm not hammering on this point every day this week. And come next week, I'll share some things, but we're moving on, okay? So I'm not constantly trying to relive the past, but we've got to learn some lessons.

We've got to grab hold of some things. So look, if you really feel that the elections were stolen, if you really believe that, and I know people that have done massive research and believe it, and others have very different conclusions. But if you really believe that, if you believe that the left is so radically opposed to some of our Christian values and is actively censoring us on social media, shutting down our accounts. There's a street preacher I know with over 500,000 on his YouTube account. He got removed. He got banned.

Well, he shouldn't preach when he's preaching. There's a whole lot of stuff that's on YouTube that is allowed to stand, all right? And people getting censored, colleagues of mine having their social media pages removed.

And I'm talking about non-political pages, just pages dealing with homosexual activism or other things, etc. So you've got all this going on. If you really believe that the nation's being taken from us, that we're never going to have free elections again, that if you open up the borders and get a flood of immigrants, that generally speaking, the first generation is going to vote Democrat. So you're going to have that. The numbers are going to shift. Then the elections are going to be rigged. Then it's over if you generally believe that.

And you believe Trump was the only one that could fight for it. I could understand how people got caught up with things, except for the fact that's not the perspective of a believer, because a believer knows that God is bigger than all this, and that flesh only reproduces flesh. And to the extent that we get caught up in the flesh and do not fight with kingdom values and with spiritual weapons, we are just like the world. When Samson has his hair cut, what's the deal?

He gets his hair cut and he is just like any other man. That's what happens when we reduce ourselves, when we're more concerned with winning the elections than winning the loss, when we become an appendage to a political party on either side, when we exalt a leader, an earthly leader into the one that can save the nation, we have now lost our high and lofty calling. Here, let me share something with you from my book. It's the second chapter of the book, The Church of Jesus is Transcended.

Let me say this. When I was writing the book, I told Nancy something doesn't feel right, something is missing. And then I wrote this chapter and I made it the second chapter of the book and I said, boom, that's what was missing. After painting an initial picture of what happened in the days leading up to the storming of the Capitol and some of the Christian rallies leading up and some of the insane rhetoric, I mean dangerous, insane rhetoric, some of it coming from Christian leaders in D.C. After painting that picture and saying, how did this happen?

How did this happen? I then felt, paint a picture of the glorious church, paint a picture of our high and lofty calling, paint a picture on who we are to be in Jesus and that, that will expose how wrong it is when we get married to the political system. Are we involved? Yes, but like everything else, we're in the world and not of it. We as a heavenly party living on the earth, we as a heavenly people living on the earth have a kingdom influence. Do not get married to a political system or party.

Oh, there's a big difference. If we can get hold of this, we can see America should. We'll be right 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. Thanks, friends, for joining us on The Line of Fire. All right, can I encourage you?

Can I build you up? Can I bless you? Here is an excerpt from the second chapter of the Political Seduction of the Church. It's called, The Church of Jesus is Transcendent. The Church of Jesus, meaning the community of believers worldwide through all generations, is utterly transcendent. It has been purchased at the highest imaginable price, the blood of the Son of God, and it consists of hundreds of millions of redeemed men and women from every background and ethnicity and color. Those who are part of this blood-brought community live in every nation on the earth, yet their ultimate citizenship is in heaven. In the words of Professor Gerald Sitzer, rather than being resident aliens, they are alien residents.

They're in this world, but not of it. Those of us who are part of this community are united, but not by any earthly creed or national anthem. We are united based on our shared citizenship in God's heavenly kingdom and our joint status as sons and daughters in his heavenly family.

And our real home city is not the city of our natural birth or current earthly dwelling, rather, it is a city that is quite literally out of this world. In Hebrews 12, 22-24, you have come to Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. We are even called the bride of Christ in scripture, meaning that corporately, we are joined with him in spirit as a husband and wife, we're joined together by mutual love. As Paul explained, Jesus the Messiah loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the words that he might present the church to himself in splendor.

Without spider wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish, Ephesians 5, 25-27. What a bright future awaits the sacred community of believers, a future in which we will be completely holy and without fault or blemish of any kind. We are also likened to a body, the body of Christ, meaning that we become one with him, extensions of his very person, functioning in this world as his hands and feet and eyes and ears and mouth, so to say. To quote Paul again, 1 Corinthians 12-27, now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And then look at what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6, do you know that your bodies are members of Christ? Excuse me, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a prostitute?

Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, the two will become one flesh, but he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

Flee from sexual immorality. I mean it's a very strong word from Paul. Do we grasp the seriousness of these words? Do we really believe what Paul is saying? Do we recognize that our physical bodies belong to God and are part of the body of Christ? Do we understand that if we had sex with a prostitute or with anyone we're not married to, we defile both ourselves and our Lord? I hear Paul shouting to us again to be sure he has our attention. Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?

Never! So he tells us 2 Corinthians 6, beginning in verse 4 to chapter 7 verse 1, come out from them. Touch no unclean thing. Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. This is God's calling on us as believers. Peter writes, 1 Peter 2, as you come to him, Jesus, a living stone, rejected by men but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves are like living stones being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. He continues, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. So this is our lofty calling, this is our sacred vocation, this is the responsibility we carry. Not only are we in the Messiah's family, the Messiah's bride, children of God, citizens of the eternal heavenly kingdom and members of the Messiah's body, but we're also a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. So we live in this world, but we're not of this world. Our spirit is different, our mentality is different, this is all written in the political seduction of the church.

Our greatest goals are different, our methods are different, even our ultimate allegiance is different, since for us there's something higher than the national flag or the team model or the company slogan. Jesus and Jesus alone is our Lord and we do not bow the knee to anyone but him. Yet it is this very thing that makes our passionate political alliances so grievous. We join the heavenly with the earthly, the sacred with the profane, the pure with the polluted, thereby loaning ourselves or even prostituting ourselves, which means that in a sense we lower and prostitute our Lord. To paraphrase Paul's words earlier, shall I take the members of Christ and make them members of the political system?

Never! As expressed by Alexander Solzhenitsyn at his commencement address to Harvard University June 8th, 1978, we have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession, our spiritual life. It is trampled by the party mob in the East, by the commercial one in the West.

Talk about a warning from Russia, Solzhenitsyn. To be clear, all in my book, we should have political involvement, because politics intersects with culture and culture intersects with morality, and the kingdom of God intersects with politics and culture and morality. But we interact as citizens of a heavenly kingdom, not owned by a party or politician, standing for causes and issues rather than people or parties. We are above politics, even while we vote and lobby and work within politics. We breathe a different spirit and carry a different identity, one that is beyond party affiliation. As for our witness to our communities, we are to be far better known as followers of Jesus than as supporters of a candidate.

Yet all too often, the opposite is true. Everyone knows who we're voting for, but far fewer know who we worship. The signs in our front yard say it all as to the hats and t-shirt we wear and the bumper stickers on our cars. We shout our support for Trump or Biden or Biden or Hillary or Obama or Biden or Hillary.

We want the whole world to hear what we virtually whisper our solidarity with Jesus. We must use wisdom, we say. Worst of all, we become just like the political system and its worst, crude and cruel, boisterous and bigoted, divisive and demeaning, merciless and mocking. Tell me I'm wrong, friends. Tell me this is not what happened in 2020. Tell me it's not ready to happen again in 2022 and 2024.

Tell me things haven't gotten even uglier. You say, well, you don't get, you don't realize the battle phrase. I realize I've been on the front lines of the culture wars here. I began warning in 2004. That LGBT activism, which didn't have the T as strong. But that gay activism was the principal threat to freedom of religion, speech and conscience in America.

2004, I was shouting it and others were shouting it long before me. I've been on the front lines of the culture wars for quite some time. I know what's at stake and the larger worldwide political issues and the balances of power. I'm no expert on politics in general or sociological studies worldwide or economic balance. That's not my area of expertise.

None of those. But I fully understand as a follower of Jesus that the stakes are high, that the nation's shaking, that we could fall off a cliff. I've been shouting it's revival or we die for well over 30 years.

All right. I mean, shouting revival or we die. Go back and read things have written in the late 80s. I mean, the same message hasn't changed. Hasn't changed. It's that intense.

It's burning in. And I believe that the elections are very important. But I believe it is infinitely more important that the church be the church that we, as followers of Jesus, hold true to our witness, that we proclaim Jesus more loudly than we proclaim political affiliation, that we proclaim Jesus more loudly than we talk about a candidate, that we proclaim Jesus and live out a Jesus model in the world that shows that we are different. We don't get dirty like the world gets. We speak the truth, but we don't get nasty. We rebuke in love, but we don't get carnal. People say, yeah, well, look at how Jesus talked to the hypocrites. Well, he did that because he loves them.

He spoke the truth and then he died for them. Yet we want to excuse our mean-spirited, nasty, immature behavior as if, well, we're being like Jesus. No, we're not. We're being like babies.

We're being like babies. If we're going to speak the truth, let us speak it full of the Spirit. Let us speak it in love with a broken heart. And then let us pray fervently for those, even fast for those that we differ with, that God would open their eyes and have mercy on them. Let us be moved by love.

Instead, we just think, the angrier I am, the madder I sound, the more I talk about Second Amendment rights, the stronger I am in Jesus. Now we're just being like the world. We can do better, friends. I know we can.

I know we can. Together. Let's be the church. Yes, vote. Yes, get involved.

Yes, make a difference. But let us do it as followers of Jesus without compromise. Grab your copy of the political seduction of the church. Talk about it on social media.

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