What the Old Testament Prophets Would Say If They Were Alive Today

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866-348-7884. Alright, here's what we're going to do first before we go to the phones. I want to talk to you about what would the Old Testament prophets say if they were alive today. Now, you and I can only speculate based on what's written in the Word, but if Isaiah was alive today, if Amos was alive today, what message would they be bringing to America, to the believers in America, to Israel, what would they be saying? Now, I do believe there are prophets in the church today.

I do believe there have been prophets through church history, not always recognized as such, not bringing revelation beyond the Bible for our salvation, but speaking what the Holy Spirit is saying to the church in an ongoing way that's a very scriptural thing that's happened through history, continues to happen to this moment. I personally believe that New Testament prophets today would not have a major focus of predicting the outcome of the elections. Their focus would be calling the church to repent, calling the nation to repent. You know, I don't think they'd be saying, well, this one was going to win, that one's going to win. They'd be talking about, no, what we're doing wrong, what we need to repent, and words of comfort and encouragement to us as we honor God and calling the world to do what is right and repent.

So, what would the Old Testament prophets say if they were here today? I was worshipping before the Lord last night briefly, and immediately some of the words of Isaiah jumped to my mind, because we just got through the midterm elections. Remarkably, I don't know why, votes still being counted. I mean, you'd think in 21st century America that we'd be able to do this more quickly, right? But votes are still being counted, so we don't know the final outcome of who controls the House, who controls the Senate, how all this works out.

I mean, leaning one way, leaning the other way, but we don't know all the details of all the elections, but people are still caught up in the fever of the elections and what's coming next, and 2024 is going to be all we're talking about the next few years, so we're kind of up in arms. And I immediately thought of the words of Isaiah, God speaking through Isaiah in the 40th chapter, that call us to a completely different mindset, a completely different viewpoint. And it's important, as much as America matters, America influences the whole world, as much as the world matters, it's important that we get a divine perspective, and then through that, we can better look at America, we can better look at elections, we can better look at our own role. So I want to start reading Isaiah chapter 40, beginning in the first verse, it's going to be a few verses until I get to the key part, but it's just such glorious scripture. I want to start here, Isaiah 40 verse 1, a voice says, cry, and I said, what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field, the grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows out. Actually, I'm down in verse 6, sorry, let's restart, let's go to verse 1.

I said I was going to start at the beginning of the chapter. Comfort, comfort my people, nachamu, nachamu, ami, yomar l'hehem, comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. So prophetic words to the Jewish people in exile, and God about to bring them back out of exile. A voice cries, in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for a God. Every valley shall be lifted up, every mountain and hill be made low, the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. So as the Jewish people come out of exile, this will be like a new exodus, and the whole world will see it and be amazed and overwhelmed. That happened partly with return from the Babylonian exile.

The fulfillment, the final working out of this is still to come. A voice says cry, and I said, what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows on it, surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. So first perspective, let's step back from this for a moment.

First perspective is this. So we'll step away from the text just for a moment. God wants us to realize that human beings are just human beings, that there are no superstars, there are no mighty ones. You know, we talk about he's a mighty man of God, she's a mighty woman of God, and I know we meet it in a gracious way and a positive way, and we're honoring these people in the Lord, but really there are men of a mighty God and women of a mighty God.

There's one that's truly mighty. Unless Jesus comes in our lifetime, we're all going to die. We're just human beings. If it rains too much on our planet, we all die.

If it doesn't rain enough, we all die. We are frail creatures, resilient, strong, created in the image of God, but just human beings. And just like the grass is cut down and withers, every human being on the planet, that is the same. It says at the end of Isaiah, the second chapter, cease to glorify men. It's literally in Hebrew, cease yourself from men. Cease to glorify men. Cease to lift up men of what is to be accounted. His breath is just as nostrils. So I think the first thing God would want to remind us through the prophets, if Isaiah was here to bring his message, one of the things he might say is this little message here.

All flesh is grass. Though the great America, the great empire, the great president, the great leader, there's only one great power. Let's get everything in perspective as we bow down before God. And there was history before America. There could well be history after America.

The mightiest empires that have ever existed. They came and they went. The great generals, the great kings, the great rulers, they're all gone. They're all gone.

Go up on a high mountain. So we go to verse nine. O Zion, herald of good news, lift up your voice with strength. O Jerusalem, herald of good news, lift it up, fear not, say to the cities of Judah, behold your God.

Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him. Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms. He will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are young. So God's compassion as he brings the exiles home. And now look at this, verse 12. And these were the verses that were sticking in my head last night. Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span?

So just like the span of a hand, like from thumb to end of the pinky. He's marked off the heavens with that. Enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains and scales and the hills in a balance. Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord? Or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult and who made him understand?

Who taught him the path of justice and taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations. So all the nations of the world. The nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales. Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust.

Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor its beasts enough for a burnt offering. All the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. And then to whom are you going to liken God? You're going to make an idol?

Just one more time. All the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.

Okay. So friends, we know that God cares deeply about human beings. We know that every life matters to God.

We know that he is compassionate and long-suffering, that he sent his son to die for us. That's the depth of expression, the greatest depth of expression we could possibly imagine and beyond what we can imagine of God's love for us. And yet, the human race, we're just little puny people.

That's it. We have to sleep at night. We have to go to the bathroom. We are regular, weak, fleshly beings who have been made great because God has singled us out by his love and chosen us for salvation and put his spirit within us. And that is why we have a special standing and stature as sons and daughters of Almighty God as part of his heavenly family. But think of this for a moment. America in God's sight, China with well over a billion people, India with well over a billion people, Russia with its, well, fading military might, but still, you know, all the, just put us all together. Now eight billion people on the planet. It's just like a drop in the bucket.

That's it. And we could offer everything we have to God and it means nothing to him. All the budget of all the entire world offered up to God, it means nothing to him. All the guns and nuclear weapons from every army point to him, it means nothing.

God is God. You say, well, what's this got to do with the elections? Everything.

It has to do with perspective. Do the elections matter? Well, does it matter if you didn't sleep well last night? Yeah, it affects your life. Does it matter if you got laid off from your job?

Yeah, absolutely. Do the elections matter? Yeah, they matter. Do the laws are affected, decisions are made?

California passed what some have said is the most radical abortion law in the world? This matters, yes. But let's get perspective. God is God.

And he's not just looking at 2018, 2020, 2022, 2024. He's looking at eternity. We need a divine perspective. We need to step back and worship God and worship God and realize, okay, God is God. Let's bow down before him.

He has a bigger plan than we realize. This is how we rise, oh. It's our resistance.

You can't resist us. This is how we rise, oh. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us. Oh, yeah, yeah. I do that a lot of Thursdays. Welcome, welcome to the Line of Fire on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. We got our special Israeli Jewish bumper music and many a time I start talking before it comes on.

My teams only got me silent because they know I do that. 866-34-TRUTH. You have a Jewish-related question. Now is the perfect time to call.

I'm gonna go to the phones momentarily. In a little while, I wanna talk to you about the prophet Amos and take you through an amazing geographic journey which you may have read Amos many times and you may never have seen the significance of this. So this is gonna be an eye-opener in the book of Amos in a moment.

But two things first. One, the perspective of the prophet Isaiah as God speaks through him about the majesty of God. And remember, this is at a time when the nations are all worshiping idols.

We're all around the world. Everyone's worshiping multiple gods and idols of different kinds. And here's this message through the prophet about this transcendent God. It stands out. I mean, it's like a ray of light in the midst of pitch darkness.

It's quite extraordinary. This revelation of the only God, the one God, and all of the gods not being gods at all. And from this perspective, you realize, okay, we get worked up about a lot of stuff, but God is still God. It doesn't minimize the sin, the damage. If you've got lax crime laws in your city and your neighbor was raped and killed by somebody that should have been in jail, that matters. I'm not downplaying that. I'm not downplaying that at all. And I've encouraged everyone to vote because I was out of state.

I voted by absentee. I understand the importance of this, but we need a bigger perspective, a God perspective, where you step back and worship that God is still God, that nations have come and gone, that whole empires that once ruled the known world where they were, mighty, powerful, they're gone. And there's not even a trace of some of them. God endures from generation to generation. And I was praying about some things at a prayer retreat last year. And I was asking the Lord about promises He's given me and impact we're supposed to have. I've seen a lot of the amazing things He's promised me come to pass, but the biggest are the ones still to come. And I was saying, Lord, I don't wanna deceive myself. I don't wanna believe that things are still to come when I'm wrong. And I was just pressing into Him and He was reminding me of His faithfulness as He kept His promises to me.

Yes, we'll keep the rest. It's just that, Son, you don't understand. I'm not just looking at this world. I'm looking at eternity. So God's plan so far supersede anything we could even imagine that what we have to do is simply get in alignment with Him.

If we are in alignment with Him, we worship Him, no matter what happens. You get good election outcomes, bad election outcomes from your perspective. One side's happy, the other side's disappointed. That's the way it's gonna be.

Then it's gonna reverse a few years later. We worship God nonetheless as God. We set our sights on eternity.

We honor Him as King. With that, we have peace, confidence. And then, Lord, what do you want me to do?

What do you want me to do? We're looking, as I said on the broadcast a day or two ago, we're looking a step or two down the line, right? You know, we're looking, okay, implications this, where we see 2024, we could maybe even look to 2028. God's not seeing the year 2500, 3000. God's seeing eternity. And He is planning things for eternity.

So let's get His perspective. It takes away a lot of the fear and panic. We can still grieve over sin. We can grieve over unrighteous laws.

We can grieve that the school board wasn't replaced and they've got this radical sex ed agenda in the schools. But there is a peace because God is God and a confidence that His word will come to pass, that everything else will fall away. Matthew 24, 35, Jesus says, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. All right, with that, let us go to Allen in Charleston, West Virginia. Welcome to the line of fire.

Hey, Dr. Brown, thanks for taking my call. Sure thing. Yeah, my question is to do with the New Testament prophet. Do you believe that the New Testament prophet must be 100% accurate? And if not, why? And give me scripture for it.

Yes, sir, thank you. An excellent question. God always speaks accurately and perfectly, correct? We agree with that. The question is, do we hear Him accurately and perfectly? Do we declare His word? So there's no doubt in the Old Testament that the prophet, as a spokesman for God to the nation, had to point to the one true God. If they pointed to other gods, they would be put to death.

Or if they said something's gonna come to pass, if it doesn't, now we understand there are conditions on everything, right? On many prophecies, I should say. Jeremiah 18, so God says, I'm gonna judge the nation, they repent, He'll turn the judgment into blessing. God says, I'm gonna bless the nation, they do evil, He'll turn the blessing into judgment. So Jonah tells the Ninevites, in Hebrew it's five words, O arba'im yon veninve naphakhet.

In 40 days, Nineveh will be destroyed. They repent, it doesn't happen. But he wasn't a false prophet because of those conditions. But if you say, God showed me tomorrow the sun will shine no matter what you do, and instead there's no sun shining, then you prophesied falsely, and you could be theoretically put to death in the Old Testament. Is it the same in the New Testament?

I don't believe it's the same for the following reasons. Number one, anyone can potentially prophesy in the New Testament. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14, I wish that you would all prophesy. And he encourages them in the 12th and the 14th chapter to earnestly seek the gifts, especially prophecy. And in Acts 2 beginning in verse 17, where Peter is quoting from Joel chapter two beginning in verse 28, he says there that the Spirit will be poured out on sons and daughters.

The Spirit will be poured out on all flesh. So everyone can potentially prophesy. You say, well, how do I know that 14, that two or three prophets should speak and the others should judge carefully what is said? And then in 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul says, don't despise prophecy, right? So we're told not to despise prophecy, to test every, and not to put out the Spirit's fire, but to test everything and hold fast to that which is good. So that indicates to me, because so many people can potentially prophesy that you may have immaturity, you may have lack of understanding, you may speak things you're not supposed to speak, you may, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, we know in part and we prophesy in part. So you may have part of a revelation and speak on beyond it. So that's why others listen and say what we discern, we hear these words, but this is what we really discern the Lord is saying. We test everything and we hold fast to the good. So instead of stoning the person, you test it and you hold fast to the good. One more point, then you can respond.

You say, yeah, but that's everybody. What about those that are called to be prophets, identified by Paul in the New Testament as prophets? Well, just like a teacher is gonna be held more accountable. James Jacob, the third chapter, not many of you should be teachers because there's greater accountability. How many Bible teachers teach the Bible incorrectly?

Well, anyone the difference with us, we think they're wrong, right? So certainly there is error. The Bible is infallible. It's God's perfect holy word, alone the word of God for all people.

And yet people can misteach it as teachers. So there's accountability. The same thing, prophets should be highly accurate, should be very careful not to speak things that they're not sure of. If they're not sure, they can say, I feel the Lord saying this, test it.

But they are highly accountable. If they're gonna say, thus saith the Lord, or the Lord says it, needs to be tested in a very strong way. And if they have a track record of missing it, being inaccurate, we shouldn't be listening to them. We should tell them, sit down, stop prophesying, find out what's going on in your life.

We don't stone them, but we shouldn't be listening to them. So the fact that potentially everyone can prophesy and that the prophetic words have to be tested, and we hold fast to the good, and obviously throw out what's not good, that indicates to me that it's not on that same level of authority or infallibility. So that's my understanding, sir. Would you agree that, I don't know a lot of people that prophesied about the election, but most of these people were seasoned people. They were people that's, I guess, been prophets for a while, or supposedly have been saved for a while, and these people were making the predictions.

I know some of them repented and said they were sorry or whatever. But we've got to realize, too, Dr. Brown, that when people does that on a national level, that they make the church look like a laughingstock. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Not only within the church, within other branches, like I'm a Pentecostal, I believe in the gifts, I believe in everything you're talking about, I believe in apostles, and I believe in that. But even within the church, we look like a laughingstock, let alone not outside of the church. 100%. Let me just jump in, only because we have a break coming up.

We can finish on the other side of the break. But, number one, it's abhorrent. When I was asked by the New York Times about this, I said, it is the worst deception I've seen at that time in 49 years in the Lord. And very few, sir, publicly repented and said they got things wrong.

Why does this happen? Because of a massive lack of accountability in the charismatic Pentecostal church for decades. Because we have not taken this seriously, we have not been accountable, we have just let words go out like the air, and who's the one that speaks the criticism? The non-charismatics, the cessationists, they come exposing our error and our folly while rejecting the very gifts of the Spirit that are real, but they see the junk because we're not policing it, they're doing it. And in my book, Playing with Holy Fire, I have two whole chapters, one on mercenary prophets and one on unaccountable prophets. The fact that so many of these same people got COVID wrong and said it was going to abate by Passover, by April 15th of 2020, they got that wrong, that should have been a massive wake-up call. Instead, they went on and kept prophesying, and some continue to prophesy.

I was watching someone the other night prophesying about midterms, I'm thinking, you should be sitting down, sir, you should have sat down months ago and humbled yourself and confessed your error and then find out what you got wrong. Stay serious, Steph, 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. Welcome, welcome to The Line of Fire. It is thoroughly Jewish Thursday. Thanks for joining us, Michael Brown, delighted to be with you. I want to read a real neat testimony to you in a moment, Jewish-related, and remind you about our Israel tour.

But first, let's just get back to Alan in Charleston, West Virginia. You know, Alan, the other thing that happened, not only did all these prophetic words make the charismatic church look bad and make the things of the Spirit look bad, but it made the larger evangelical church look bad, even the non-charismatics that had nothing to do with this because the voices were so loud, and, you know, if we voted for Trump, we were kind of like all grouped together. So it brought reproach on the name of Jesus and the church more broadly, even for those who don't believe in these things. And it's just years of lack of discernment, years of lack of accountability in our midst. And I understand that our cessationist friends, they err the other way. They can become skeptical and cynical, even of the things of the Spirit. But then we go in the other direction, and we're so gullible. So it's good to have faith, but we have to have faith with wisdom and base things on the Word. So it's a serious issue, and it got to crisis level because we didn't fix it earlier.

So there's gotta be a lot of housecleaning. Thank God for real prophetic ministries. You've seen them. You've seen when a word at the right time is just an amazing thing and perfectly timed and it helps a grieving family or gives direction to someone in great need or reveals sin in someone's life.

You've seen it operate. It's a beautiful, wonderful gift, but terrible shame. Anything else you wanted to say, sir? All right, tell you what. I think Alan must have hung up during the break, which is just great. We covered that ground. All right, before we go back to the phones, let me read this to you. This is from Keaton.

I just happened to find it on YouTube quite accidentally. I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Brown. If it were not for him, I wouldn't have come back to Christianity after seven years of rejecting it through being convinced of the Jewish objections to Christianity. Dr. Brown's five-volume series really did change my mind and I would not be where I am now were it not for him. And then he went on to just want a dialogue about a salvation issue, et cetera, and dialogue with me on that.

It had a different perspective. But he posted this testimony. And friends, that's why we're here. Every single day through our website, through our resources, through the debates we've put online, through special videos, every day we are helping Jewish people come to faith in Jesus the Messiah. We are helping Jewish seekers who are struggling who have doubts, questions, get grounded in their faith. We are helping them come back to faith. We are helping Christians who've now been hit by some aggressive rabbis online that just attack their faith or that have fallen away entirely like Keaton. And through these resources, they're coming to faith.

They're coming back to faith. And all of you who pray for us, you're a part of that. All of you who support us, you're a part of that. So I wanna encourage you to stand with us. Paul does say it as a gospel mandate to the Jew first, also to the Gentile, Romans 1.16.

We emphasize elsewhere in scripture. Help us be on the front lines of reaching Jewish people with the good news of the Messiah. If you've never helped support it, as we come to the end of the year, it's a time when we really make an open appeal and say, hey, stand with us, get behind us. You can give a one-time gift. You can become a torchbearer, a monthly supporter. And as you do, you get access to a lot of material, classes I've taught, other things that people would pay to get, you get those. If you go to Israel with us, you get $300 off the trip just right there. You get a 15% discount on our online bookstore.

You get a new audio message every month. You get a special insider prayer letter from me. So go to our website, askdartorbrown.org. A-S-K-D-R brown.org.

Askdartorbrown.org. And when you're there, click on donate, either monthly support or join our team as a torchbearer. We'll send you a beautiful Bible, my revolution book, and just pour into you. We pour into you every month as you help us.

A torchbearer gives $1 a day or more, so $30 or more per month. So to every torchbearer listening, watching, thank you. Thank you. To everyone that's given at any time, thank you. To those who pray for us, thank you.

Your gifts, your prayers are making a profound difference. And if you can join us in Israel, hey, sign up as a torchbearer. You get almost, if you're given $30 a month, it's $360 here, you get 300 off the price of the Israel tour right off the bat.

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That is all at askdartorbrown.org. All right, let's go back to the phones and we'll go to Chad in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Brown. Hey. I called in about three weeks ago to ask about Jeremiah 33, 18. I thought I remembered the name and the scripture. Yes, sir, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah. So one of the things you said during that conversation was this. You didn't have a problem with the idea that there will be future temple sacrifices or future burnt offerings because burnt offerings weren't done for the purpose of atonement.

Is that right? Yeah, burnt offerings were dedication. There's a rabbinic tradition that in the world to come, the only sacrifices that will remain are thanksgiving offerings.

So all those traditions. You do have one of the offerings in Ezekiel's temple that has to do with cleansing from sin, but that could easily be interpreted as a ritual cleansing as opposed to forgiveness. Okay, well, I did want to talk about the Ezekiel verse as well, but before we get to that, there are a couple of verses in the Old Testament that suggested me, and maybe I'm wrong, but which suggests to me that there is an atonement aspect to these sacrifice or these burnt offerings.

So, for example, Leviticus 5.10 says, The priests shall then offer the other as a burnt offering in the prescribed way and make atonement for them for the sin they have committed, and they will be forgiven. Am I mistaken in interpreting this as suggesting that there's an atonement aspect to this sacrifice? In other words, it can be part of an atonement process. There's an atonement element potentially in every blood sacrifice because it is substitutionary. But with the burnt offering symbolized, it was not a primary atonement offering. In other words, on the day of atonement, it was not primarily burnt offerings that were offered, but sin offerings or guilt offerings. These were the things that were tied in with atonement. Burnt offering was tied in with the dedication of the entire life to God.

That's why no one ate it. The whole thing was burned on the altar. But the primary thing I would have emphasized is thanksgiving offerings, and the rabbinic tradition is about thanksgiving offerings. So burnt offerings can just be dedication. They can tie in with atonement.

It's not their primary function, though. So unless it explicitly says it, this was not something that you would offer for atonement. This would not be if you committed an unintentional sin and you realized you violated something. It's like, oh, what did I do?

I need to get this right. You didn't bring a burnt offering. You brought a guilt offering. In other cases, you would bring a sin offering. So the burnt offering was not one of the prescribed offerings for atonement. So if you had it in the future, unless it explicitly said it's for atonement, you wouldn't assume that it was.

Okay. Yeah, I'll be honest. I find this all very confusing because it just seems like there's so many different sacrifices, and sometimes they're for atonement, sometimes they're not, and it's like, okay, should the default assumption be that a sacrifice isn't for atonement unless it says otherwise? I don't understand why there are so many sacrifices. That's the whole thing, though. In other words, they didn't all have the same purpose.

You're not the first person to read the text and be confused. And by the way, top scholars debate some of these issues to this day. Top Leviticus scholars debate the meaning and function of certain sacrifices.

You know, we translate peace offering, others would say, no, no, that's a fellowship offering. So they had different purposes. That's why there were different sacrifices. Let me say again, there is overlap because it was the altar of atonement in Israel. It was the place where atonement was made. Even Maimonides calls it mizbah kaparah, the altar of atonement. So it had those functions, but many of the offerings were not primarily for atonement.

So again, potentially there can be atonement involved. But if you look through, look, when we come to worship God, we come for one purpose to worship. Worship can have many different facets to it. But there's the teaching of the word, there's worship, there's prayer before this, there's that.

Each thing has its function. So one offering had a particular function. It was you offering yourself to God.

It was devotion. You had certain offerings if you make a Nazarite vow, right? You had certain offerings if you committed a certain sin, you touched a dead body. You had certain offerings if you were overcoming a defiling skin condition and now you were being restored. There were certain offerings that were offered up on the Day of Atonement.

So they had specific functions, and most of those functions are pretty well spelled out, especially in the first seven chapters of Leviticus. Okay, well maybe this is a good time to move on to Ezekiel 45 because there's another verse in here which indicates to me that the burnt offerings are for a purpose of atonement. So in verse 17 it says, It shall be the prince's duty to furnish the burnt offerings, grain offerings, and drink offerings at the feast, new moons, and the Sabbath, all the appointed feasts of the house of Israel. He shall provide the sin offerings, grain offerings, and burnt offerings, and peace offerings, to make atonement on behalf of the house of Israel. Now you mentioned earlier that these sacrifices, you see them as serving a purpose of cleansing the temple, and I do see a verse that indicates that, like verse 20 where it says, You shall make atonement for the temple. But it seems like there are also other verses in this chapter which suggest that they are for the people of Israel, right? So verse 17, like I just mentioned, and then verse 22 where it says, All the people of the land shall, I think, or is it verse 22?

Yeah. On that day the prince shall provide for himself and all the people of the land a young bull for sin offerings. So it suggests to me that it's more than just cleansing the temple. But what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, you're exactly right. Verse 17 is not about cleansing the temple. And notice that sin offerings are added into this when you get to the atonement issue, that sin offering becomes part of the equation. So I discussed this with Professor Richard Averbeck. And Dick Averbeck is one of the world's top Sumerian scholars.

It's a very difficult ancient language. He's one of the top scholars in that, and one of the world's top Leviticus scholars. In the New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, he has a lot of the material there about sacrifices and offerings. A lot of it is basically all the major articles he wrote, probably a couple hundred articles, a hundred pages there. He said to me, and we discussed this very issue, because I raised this exact point as we were discussing a few years ago.

He said this is no different than before the cross, that these still had to do with a purification, an outward purification, as opposed to an inward transformation. I'll finish 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. Welcome, friends, to Thirdly Jewish Thursday. All right, so Chad, just to finish this up, I want to read to you from Hebrews 9, verse 13.

Then I must get to Amos, just because I promised everyone I would, but we can always have part three of our conversation, Chad. Hebrews 9, 13, For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. And then, over in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 4, For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. In other words, in Professor Eberbeck's understanding, that the Old Testament sacrifices functioned in a way that just brought outward purification and cleansing, that the kapeh to atone is also to purge, so to expiate, to purge, to cleanse, and that forgiveness only comes through the blood of Messiah, so that these sacrifices, in his view, would be no different, that obviously with repentance, day of atonement, there could be national forgiveness, but that otherwise there was an outward cleansing, but not an inner work of the Spirit and the conscience and the heart, and that that's what happens through the cross, so that whatever these Old Testament sacrifices did, that that's what they'll do in the future.

It's no different, because they could never actually take away sin, so the atonement was more of a ritual cleansing and a removal of defilement, as opposed to a true forgiveness of sins that only comes through the cross. Now, again, others would say it's all symbolic language. Ezekiel speaks of us all symbolic.

It's not to be taken literally. There will obviously be no sacrifices in the future, and I fully respect that view based on the once-for-all work of the cross. The other way to look at it is the Old Testament sacrifices look towards the cross. The future sacrifices look back to the cross, but none of them in themselves actually take away sins or bring inward atonement. That only comes through the cross. So you probably got a follow-up question. Let's take it up again, but chew on that.

Read through Hebrews 9 and 10, and then see if this falls into place more for you. All right? Thank you. And these are 100% legitimate questions.

100% legitimate. Okay, I want to go over to Amos chapter 1, as I said. And you may have read this and never noticed what's going on here.

And if you don't know the geography, it wouldn't occur to you. So Amos chapter 1, he starts out, the Lord drawers from Zion, verse 2, and he prophesies two years before the earthquake, right? So, okay, God shook the nation after he spoke. Verse 3, for three transgressions of Damascus. This is not Israel. This is Damascus, Syria today. So where is Damascus? Well, that's north of Israel.

And actually a little bit to the west. So just put a dot like up here. I'll raise my right hand and put a dot up there. Okay, now what's next? Verse 6, thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Gaza, and for four I'll not revoke the punishment. So God bringing judgment on Damascus, that's north a little bit to the west. And now Gaza, so it's right now Gaza Strip, same thing in Israel. That's south, excuse me, so northeast, forgive me for that, northeast and southwest, all right?

So we got to stick a pin up here and then shoot straight across. Now what's next? Verse 9, thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Tyre, and for four I'll not revoke the punishment. That's modern-day Lebanon. So that is north, right? But this time west, northwest. So you got first Damascus, boom, northeast. Now draw a line down, southwest Gaza. Now you've got, put another pin up here, Lebanon, Tyre, northwest.

Now what's next? For three transgressions of Edom, that's southeast. So it's just like a giant X was just drawn across the nation. So God's speaking through Amos, foreign nation, foreign nation, foreign nation, foreign nation, but it's like he just put a giant X over Israel. Then for three transgressions of the Ammonites, well they're next to Edom, that's over to the east. And then another for three, thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Moab, well that's next to Ammon, also on the east. So you've got, boom, boom, so top, let's look at it like this, top right, bottom left, top left, bottom right, and now just moving up that bottom right, next, next, next, it's getting a little close to home, Amos.

And now, what's next? Verse four, for three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment. Oh, this is very close now, because Amos lives in northern Israel, and this is now southern, you're right next to us, Amos.

We were glad when you prophesied against our enemies, but you're right next to us. Then, verse six, for three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, and the rest of the book is rebuking Israel, Amos' own people. So if Amos was alive today, what would he say? I believe he'd rebuke the nation. Just like he called out the pagan nations, not for not keeping the dietary laws, not because they didn't observe the seven-day Sabbath, but because they were killing each other, because they were breaking covenant, because they were guilty of violating human rights and brotherly kindness.

That's for everybody. So I would believe he'd rebuke America, even the unbelievers, rebuke us for our terrible sin, rebuke us for the shedding of innocent blood, rebuke us for murder and rape, rebuke us for dealing drugs and human trafficking, rebuke us for our horrific abortion laws, rebuke us for our sexual immorality. There are things that are just universal transgressions. I believe he would do that speaking for God today, at least it seems that way to me, based on these verses, but he'd spend the bulk of his time rebuking us, the church, the people of God. Yes, God does have judgment for the nations. Yes, God is angry with those who sin, but judgment begins with the house of God. What does it say in Amos chapter three, verse one? You only have I known, meaning chosen, out, selected, set my eye. You only have I known out of all the families of the earth, therefore I'll punish you for your iniquities.

So great responsibility means great accountability. Yes, sir. All right, let us go over to Paul in Charlotte, North Carolina. Welcome to the line of fire.

Thanks for taking my call, Dr. Brown. You bet. I have two things I would love to hear your commentary on, and the first is the fact that, speaking of sacrifices, would God just have appointed someone like an Abraham, you know, contemporaneous with Jesus, I don't know, Simeon or Zacharias, to take him to an altar and offer his life on an altar, rather than having sinful men and go through that whole process. I just want to hear your commentary on that.

I know God ordaining it to happen the way it did happen. And number two, tell me about that. No, let me just answer first, because I'm on the clock, I want to make sure I at least get one done. If we get time for number two, great, but let me go here first.

Okay. Number one, he was not an animal sacrifice. He was not to be offered on an altar. Rather, he was a human being dying in our place. He was a righteous martyr. It was not human sacrifice. God abhors human sacrifice. So if we had done that, brought him to an altar and killed him, that would have been human sacrifice, and God abhors that. Rather, this is the good shepherd laying down his life for the sheep. So he took what we deserved, and therefore there is the accumulation of human sin poured out on him. Human sin is manifest in its rebellion and anger and hatred of God by killing the Son of God, and he now takes on all that sin, all that guilt, and with it dies the most humiliating barbaric death known to man at that time as a public display of the ugliness of sin, God's judgment of sin, and the depth of God's love.

So everything kind of flows together. If it had gone the way you're suggesting, that would have been human sacrifice, which God abhors. This was rather the atoning power of the death of the righteous. This one saying, hey, Father, I will take on me. It'd be like someone's coming to kidnap your whole family, and the dad runs forward and says, no, no, take me, take me. That's what happened.

He was taken so we could be free. All right, real quick, number two. Very good. Number two, tell me about the drink offering.

I don't know much about that. Yeah, so there were libations, drink offerings, where you would have the designated drink, and it would be poured on the altar. So it was just another way of expressing thanksgiving to God or expressing devotion to God.

And you had these exact proportions. This way, it had some kind of order. Paul uses it as a reference in his own life and says, even if I'm being poured out on the sacrifice and service of your faith, in Philippians, the first chapter, I rejoice. So it does have imagery. But in the Bible, there was grain that was offered up, and that was burned on the altar. There were animals that were offered up. And so what's the other aspect of eating and drinking? So drink was part of the offering. What exactly it symbolized or signified beyond an aspect of pouring out, that can be debated.

But you had food, you had drink. So these are both given on the altar. Now in pagan temples, this would be for the priest to eat and drink. But here, these drink offerings, especially poured out on the altar. And again, it has that symbolism in the New Testament. Thank you, sir, for your calls.

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