Dr. Brown Answers Your Best Questions

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Phone lines are open. You've got questions. We've got answers. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the director of the Coalition of Conscience and president of Fire School of Ministry. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us, friends.

This is Michael Brown. Welcome to The Line of Fire. You've got questions.

We've got answers. Any subject under the sun you want to talk about, as long as it relates in some way to subject matter of The Line of Fire so I can be of help to you. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. At the bottom of the hour, in the midst of the Q&A, I want to give a quick update on what's happening in Israel and the conflict with Hamas and how that is spreading in the region.

I want to talk to you about that very briefly. And a reminder that my newest book, Has God Failed You? Finding faith when you're not even sure God is real. It's now available. Paperback, ebook, audiobook.

So wherever you get your books, you can get that now. Has God Failed You? Either for you, if you struggled with unbelief, doubt, connecting with God in your own life, or someone close to you, maybe they've fallen away, this is an ideal book to read and to give to a friend.

Has God Failed You? now available. All right, 866-34-TRUTH. We go to the phone starting in Toronto, Canada.

Sergio, welcome to The Line of Fire. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, it should be better because I have my headset now. Can you hear me? Yeah, go ahead.

Okay, hi Dr. Brown. Thank you very much for taking my call and I'm calling to ask you about a little bit of the Jewish roots. So I have some friends, I'm thinking of two different people, that are interested, they're coming out to, coming out of churches that are not healthy, and now they're curious about the Jewish roots. So there's like several kind of like things that they, that I'm concerned about, is people like taking, yeah, thinking too much of the law, maybe even going to the point of saying that we need to do sacrifices again.

Seriously. Yeah, and then there's the other aspect, comments like saying that the Catholic Church was the one that invented the Trinity, that it was, that it was in the, in the Council, no, the one that... The Council of Nicaea, etc., right, so they're already, right, so they've already gone over the deep end. They already are embracing heresy. This is not just curious about the Jewish roots of the faith, because the Jewish roots of the faith are healthy. This is heresy that they're embracing.

So whatever extreme they were in, on the one hand, they've now gone to a very dangerous extreme on the other side. And you really got to pray, because it's a spirit of deception that's on them. And often these Gentile believers then think they're going to be super Jews and end up denying Jesus in the process. And I would urge them, to start by reading Hebrews on their knees over and over, where it clearly, the very first chapter declares the deity of Jesus, where it clearly lays out the change in the sacrificial system and priesthood through the Messiah's death and resurrection, and to keep that central. And unless they do, they'll end up denying the Lord entirely and ending up in some kind of cult.

What do you think are the fundamentals that they should be focusing on? I remember you used to talk about people, they fascinate and they end up negating. There's something that you always often quote. Yeah, the whole quote, Jewish temptation, wanting to be Jewish or be authentic or have some kind of Jewishness. The whole Jewish temptation is in the soul realm. So the realm of the emotions and those desires that we can think are spiritual, but they're really not.

It will fascinate, stimulate, complicate, suffocate. So be on your guard. So the antidote to that is to really worship Yeshua, Jesus, and recognize his finished work on the cross. That's the antidote to it. That's why I recommend that you urge them to read Hebrews, not with commentaries, not with other explanations from this latest Internet teacher, but get alone with God, get on their knees the way Solomon got on his knees and Ezra got on his knees and Paul got on his knees because some won't even want to get on their knees because Jews pray, stand, you know, all that.

So you want to kind of break through that nonsense. So get on their knees alone and read through Hebrews several times over and over. Look at how Jesus is exalted as God. The Son is exalted as God. The Son is God right there in the first chapter.

Look at how he's central in everything. Look at how the changes have come with sacrifice and priesthood because of him being our great high priest and taking our place on the cross, etc. And just pray that God will awaken them. If they start pushing in this direction, I just step back and pray because it's the Holy Spirit that has to open their eyes and whatever they're reacting to because, I mean, there's so much factual evidence that completely smashes their position that the only way you can come to it is with some preconceived bad ideas. But pray for them, Sergio, and then really encourage them, challenge them, or say, let's just, we'll just read through Hebrews with no commentary.

Let's just read through it several times together. Get on our knees before God and say, God, we just want your truth. And just read through it several times and see if the Holy Spirit penetrates. And then if they can't say, Jesus, I praise you. I love you. I worship you. I adore you.

Again, they have, that's just a further proof they stepped over into heresy. May the Lord give you wisdom. May the Lord bring them back. Hey, thank you. Thank you for the call, sir.

866-342. Yeah, you see it happen all the time. You go from the extreme of replacement theology and the church that's completely severed itself from Jewish roots and barely resembles the New Testament church. And you go from there into an extreme Hebrew roots heresy.

It's the pendulum swings. And people, instead of getting grounded in the fundamentals and scripture, they go from one extreme to the other. Let's go to Baruch in Bushnell, Florida. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Shalom, Michael. Thank you so much for the blessing that you are to the body of Christ.

And I greatly appreciate what God is doing in it through you. Quick question. Can you please comment on two-house theology, and does it have any scriptural foundation? Yeah, so two-house theology, as it's only referred to, looks at passages in the Old Testament that speak about Joseph, Ephraim, Israel, so the northern kingdom, and the kingdom of Judah. You know, the two sticks that are brought together in the book of Ezekiel and things like that.

Just saying this for the benefit of those not familiar with it. And the argument is that when the Bible talks about Israel in the Old Testament, and then it begins to talk about Israel as a family of nations and things like that, that it actually represents all Gentile believers worldwide and that Judah represents the Jewish people. So it's the union of Gentile believers in Jesus with the Jewish people coming together as one, and that's what will happen.

That's what this end-time mystery is, etc. Of course, there is zero truth for that scripturally, and the easiest way to refute it is to see how the prophets constantly use Israel, speaking about Judah as well. I noted that while writing my commentary on Jeremiah, and then reading through Ezekiel a few weeks ago, I noted the same thing, that even though northern Israel has already been exiled, God would often refer to Judah as Israel because that was the name of the whole nation. And constantly in Ezekiel, he's speaking about Israel, Israel, Israel, where he's talking about the southern kingdom of Judah. So when it's talking about the two sticks coming together, it is talking about the northern kingdom of Israel, which is Israelites, and the southern kingdom of Judah, and somehow that reunification.

You say, yeah, but how do we know how to do that now because everyone's scattered? Well, that's for God to figure out. You know, that's for God to know who's who. But the idea that this speaks actually of Gentile believers or that all Gentile believers are actually descendants of the ten tribes of northern Israel, I mean, that's complete nonsense. It's without any historical foundation, any scriptural foundation. And in fact, God makes a big deal about the Gentiles, the goyim, joining in with the people of Israel.

That's the other thing. Like, well, who are the people then, the nations who are added to Israel? Like in Isaiah 19, where you have Israel, and then you have Egypt, and you have Assyria all worshiping God together. Well, according to the two house theology, Assyria and Egypt, the believers there are actually Israel themselves.

So it breaks down. What it does is it takes a couple of verses here and there, you know, prophecies to Jacob or things like that about his offspring or the future generations being like a kingdom of nations and things. It's just talking about the growth of Israel from a little family to a nation of millions of people.

That's all it's talking about. One more question. Yeah. As it relates to that, so you have multitudes of people who are Gentile who say that they are the house of Ephraim. I mean, that they are, in fact, I know there's people that teach that, that they are the house of Ephraim. And so my question is, so we know two sticks in relation to the tribes, but the scriptures also in Ephesians 2, 14, and 16 talks about the one who met.

Yeah. Two and Gentile becoming one. So my question is, how does that come about where you've got people that are, now, you've got one extreme with, of course, you've got replacement theology on one end, but then the other side is now the church is Ephraim. And they, you know, there's people that are teaching that they are Ephraim as Gentiles, but they are Ephraim.

How does that all work? Yeah, so number one, it's a very, very small group and movement. The fact that you're aware of people and no others in it can give an inflated idea, but it's a tiny, tiny minority in the body. Now, if they said, hey, we don't actually think we're Ephraim, we just think that prophetically, the same way God dealt with Israel when he said, you're not my people, you are my people. Paul uses that in an analogy in Romans, you know, Gentiles, you're not my people, now you're my people. That all we see is a spiritual metaphor and it's homiletical.

Okay, that's no big deal. I mean, we all can find spiritual analogies and metaphors, but God is bringing Jew and Gentile together in Jesus as one new being, one new humanity, and making a statement to the world as he does that, whether we fully understand it or not. In other words, when you have Christians that are genuine Christians but hold to replacement theology, and then you have Gentile Christians who are genuine Christians but somehow think that they're actually descendants of Ephraim, you know, meaning northern Israel.

Okay, it's unfortunate the errors are there, but God is doing what he's doing despite that. The more understanding we have, the better we'll be able to live this out and show the world what it means to be one in the Messiah without losing our identity. I'm still a man. My wife Nancy is still a woman. There's no male and female in Jesus, just like there's no Jew and Gentile. The distinctions remain, but we're equal.

No caste system, no class system. All right, thanks for the question. We'll be right back. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Those watching live on Facebook, YouTube, just got a personal wave there. On Instagram, it's drmichaelbrown, and on Twitter, drmichaellbrown. So connect with us.

Unique content on all the different platforms. All right, we go over to Anthony. No, we don't, in New York City. It was a question about the book of Revelation, but maybe he was like taken by UFOs or something before we could get to him. Okay, I joke a little bit here and there, yeah. Let's go to Secaucus, New Jersey. John, welcome to The Line of Fire.

How are you doing? Thanks for taking my call. You're welcome. I have a quick question. I guess I'm a little confused on hell. Is it something that I know it was prepared for the angels and so on, but is it something that people are there now, or is it something after, when everything's done? And I guess I'm a little confused with hell.

There are a few different words that are used to describe things, hence the question. So the general word for the netherworld, the grave, the netherworld, the place of the dead, is shaol in the Old Testament or Hades in the New Testament, and neither of them speak specifically of hell. Sometimes in older translations, they'd be translated with hell, but then they're really speaking of the netherworld, and it would just kind of be the generic place to which everybody goes at death, not specifically of heaven or of hell or of torment or of blessing, but rather just the place of the dead. Then there's gehenna, which is used in the New Testament, which is the place of hell fire. Jesus will talk about the fire of gehenna, and that is a place of future judgment. So we understand, based on Luke 16, that the moment someone dies that is lost and separated from God, they do go to a place of separation, that their spirit is waiting in a place of separation, which is a negative, bad setting, but they await the final resurrection and judgment, in which case they stand before God, and if they're guilty, they are cast into hell, which can be described as the lake of fire, which is obviously a metaphor. These are metaphorical terms that are being used to speak of the terrible judgment to come. So there would be people quote in hell now, but the better terminology would be that they're in the netherworld, awaiting the final judgment, at which point they will be cast into the fire of hell. So that's painting the picture for you, but right at death there's a separation, but then the final judgment is still to come, and when the final judgment comes, then that's it forever, the righteous with the Lord forever, and the wicked, some would say eternally destroyed, others say go into eternal punishment, you know, they're different verses put in different ways. So there's the immediate, but then the final dreadful judgment is still to come. I'm sorry, one last question. I heard, I don't know if it's true, but I heard that the Jewish people don't believe in hell.

Is that true? And where do they believe that they do go? Right, so number one, Judaism does not put as much of an emphasis on the afterworld as Christianity does. It does recognize that there's a famous statement in the Mishnah that this world is the vestibule to the world to come, so this kind of like the dressing room here, getting ready for the world to come, and there is a recognition of future resurrection. Secular Jews, liberal Jews, kind of believe this world is it, you die, you die, but religious Jews who do believe there's a world to come, some might say, based on some rabbinic traditions, that for the absolutely most wretchedly wicked people like a Hitler, that they'll suffer forever, but the normal view is that you will suffer in the world to come up to 11 months, and kind of, it's a similar concept to Catholic purgatory, but not identical, and during that time you will further pay for sins committed in this world, and further be purified after which you go into the world to come, a place of blessing and the presence of God forever, but obviously you're not going to find that concept taught clearly in scripture, that there's some purging thing you go through after which you kind of graduate into God's eternal heaven, so obviously I reject that scripture. Hey John, thank you for the calls, I appreciate it, and whatever you believe, please take very seriously, when I say whatever you believe, whatever nuances and distinctions you believe about future punishment, please feel the weight of this, that people are lost without Jesus.

All right, let's go to Seagrove, North Carolina. Todd, welcome to the line of fire. Thank you, Dr. Brown. My question is coming from Job chapter 19. He's responding to a Bill Davis shoe hype, and something struck me kind of strange in the second half of verse 17, where Job says that he is repulsive to the children of his body, and it struck me strange because his children were killed in chapter one, so I'm calling to get some clarification about that. Yeah, it is a question that commentators struggle with, and that I didn't notice myself until I was writing my commentary on it in the book of Job, so I'm going to share with you exactly how I explained it in my commentary, because the question is, right, if he's saying, hey, I am so afflicted and so disfigured, I've lost everything, I'm so reproachful, that my own kids are trying to talk to me, all his own kids were killed, so how do we explain that?

I'm just going to scroll down to where I deal with this in my commentary. Let's take a second to do that, but how many times did you read that before you noticed that? I've read it several times, it just happened this last time around, because part of my daily Bible read right now was in the book of Job, so I read that chapter probably about three or four days ago. Yeah, the same, but I mean, I read it, Job, countless times, and it never struck me until I was writing my commentary on it. So here's what I wrote, since all his children were, okay, so he's loathsome to his own children, which in the Septuagint is rendered as the sons of my concubines, so maybe these were others. Since all his children were dead, however, scholars have speculated on the significance of his words, some suggesting that Job speaks here of siblings, the children of the woman which he too was conceived. Others think of children he raised as if his own, while still others, in particular critical scholars, suggest that the apparent discrepancy between the prologue in which the children were killed in this verse demonstrates that the prose prologue and the poetic chapters were originally unrelated. But would the final editor of Job have missed something this significant, and don't the poetic chapters assume the dreadful realities of the first two chapters? It would be better to follow one major scholar and others to suggest that Job is simply using a stereotypical list of alienated people without being overly concerned with harmonization of the details. So he's speaking generically like everybody, you know, and just kind of going through the list of people who have rejected him or are repulsed by him, and going through the list, it's, you know, maybe my own kids, and so it's not exactly accurate, it's just spoken in the midst of grief, pain, agony. Otherwise, you know, you have to come up with one of the ideas that it's, he's talking about siblings, you know, the womb, meaning the same womb that I was in, and it's possible, possible explanation, but just not as likely. Either way, it's a question, but it could be just in the midst of his own grief, just his own kids, it's just, he's not speaking exactly, but more generically are those that, you know, were family or whatever on some level.

But interesting question, though, for sure. Hey, thank you, Todd, as always, for your question. 866-34-TRUTH.

Let's go to Caleb in Canton, Ohio. Welcome to the line of fire. Oh, thank you for having me, Dr. Brown.

You're welcome. So I, sorry, not to sound weird, but I was born with an autoimmune disorder. I am 23 years old.

I'm living currently with my parents. I'm trying to get my driver's license, I'm trying to get my life in order, and one of these things that the autoimmune disorder does is it basically makes it very difficult to discern reality, and it has made it so that, really hard to hear God, to see God, you can't discern anything, and my biggest fear is hell, because I'm in so much pain, and I just can't think of the pain going on forever, and it scares me. Any large quantity of anything I look at, the first thing I think of is hell. When I'm on a beach and I see every little grain of sand along the beach, I think of a trillion years of burning in the lake of fire, and it is so overwhelming to me, and I don't want to compromise on biblical doctrine as much as I want to, and say, well, oh, well, there is no hell, there is no, you know, or love wins, because obviously I know that's not true, but how can I... Yeah, Caleb, stay right there, stay right there, and I want to speak to this on the other side of the break. Hang in there, don't go anywhere, Caleb, and I do want to help you, so stay right here, and folks, just breathe a prayer for Caleb during our break here.

We'll be right back. 6-6, 3-4 Truth, you've got questions, we've got answers, so I want to go to Caleb in Canton, Ohio. Caleb, I can't relate personally to your situation. I've never been physically challenged, disabled in this way over a period of time, never had to relate to that. You know, any sickness I had was short, never had to relate to all the other challenges, but I do know God, and I do know what His Word says. So Caleb, why would you think that God would send you to hell when you have truly looked to Jesus to save you, when you believe that He's the Son of God, that He died for your sins and rose from the dead, you recognize your own sin and need for a Savior, why would He send you to hell? Well, the torment could be quite hard to manage a lot of times.

You know, I've been hospitalized multiple times, I've been put on all kinds of countless medications, infusions, all over the country, going to doctor to doctor, and you know, to be frank, I've wanted to end it, but I get scared because I don't know where I'm gonna go if I end it, and so no matter how hard it gets, I try to just keep going because I get so scared. Right. So in other words, it's the fear of suicide that makes you think of hell, otherwise you're... Do you believe that there's any reason, let's say that you were to die of natural causes in your sleep, why would God, our compassionate loving Father, who cares for us more than we could ever imagine, it says in the Psalms, He knows our frame, He knows that we're just dust, and as a Father has compassion on His children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. If you've put your trust in Jesus to save you, why would God send you to hell?

Well, I think part of it, too, is the suicide thing. Right. But let's put that aside for the moment. Even there, God understands the torment that you're going through and the pain that you're going through, but even putting that aside, so we're not even thinking about suicide, why would God send you to hell? Because I'm a sinner.

Right, but we're all sinners. Yeah. Have you truly asked Jesus to save you and forgive you, and tell God, you confessed your sin, you recognized your guilt, you make no excuses, and you've asked for forgiveness through the cross?

Have you done that? Yes. Right, so is God trustworthy or not?

Yeah, He's trustworthy, yeah. And did Jesus come to seek and save the lost or not? That's who He came to seek and save, right? Right.

Right. Do you think that you're better than God? No. Right, well, would you damn someone to hell because they have a lifelong disease that's not their own fault, and they want to please God? If you were God, would you damn that person to hell forever? I don't know, I'm not God. Right, well, you're certainly not better than God, right?

Right. Right, so the first thing that I would encourage you to do is to just focus on what you know, that forget you, meaning how are you doing, are you doing anything for God, are you praying, are you reading the Bible, are you hearing His voice, don't even think about that. Just put all your emphasis, if it's just listening to worship music, if it's just meditating on the same verse, if it's just meditating on the same verse, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus died for me, Jesus shed His blood for me, Jesus, just keep majoring on the majors. And as far as trying to discern, just read passages about the love of God, the goodness of God, until they penetrate your soul.

Obviously, you keep crying out for healing or miracle or, you know, for if you can't feel, you can't take it for God to take you home. And two, it's hard to try to reconcile a loving God with eternal torment. Like, I can, you know, I have to, because that's what the Bible teaches, and it's a hard pill for me to swallow, and I don't want to compromise on that.

Right, but it's not something you need to be focusing on. It's not what you're, nowhere does the New Testament say, make sure you meditate a lot on hell. It's a warning for rebels. It's a warning for willful sinners.

It's a warning to say, don't play games, there's a penalty. But for believers, for believers, we should be thanking God for freedom, salvation, deliverance. So Caleb, I want to encourage you, we often don't see answers in this world that we'll see in the world to come. You know, even if we're healed, we still all die, even if we're healthy, we eventually all die. So forever and ever and ever, we experience the goodness and grace of God. And as much as you've endured suffering that most of us could never imagine in 80 or 90 years, even during it in 23 years, I can't speak to that personally, other than to say that God will manifest His goodness in you forever. And that what He wants you to know now is that He loves you, rather than condemning you, He's with you in your pain, in your suffering. Read through Hebrews 2 and Hebrews 4. Read through Psalm 103. Take those in Psalm 103, Hebrews 2, Hebrews 4, and keep going through them and asking God to make these things real to you until your whole being resonates with the fact that Jesus loves me as I am, right here now, even when there's almost nothing I can do for Him.

He loves me, He's for me, He's not against me. Read through Romans 8, especially verses 26 to the end of the chapter, Romans 8, 26 to the end of the chapter. Let that flood your heart and mind until there's peace. He wants to give you peace, and we keep crying out for healing in the midst of it. So folks, pray for Caleb.

Thank you for calling and being so honest. Put your focus on Jesus, not on hell. Put your focus on God's love, not your shortcomings, failings. And I believe you'll begin to see change and growth in your own heart. May the Lord work a miracle on your behalf. Hey, thank you. Thank you for calling.

866-34-TRUTH. Hey, this is not abstract stuff. Some of you are going through real challenging times. You know, when I wrote Has God Failed You, I've just got it sitting over here. When I wrote it, I wrote it with people like Caleb and mine. In other words, I wrote it for people that have really been through hard times, and some have lost their faith along the way. And I said right at the beginning of the book, there are no cheap answers. No cheap answers.

What good's a cheap answer? God's not put off by our pain, by our questions, by our doubts. All right, before I go back to the phone, so Israel announced last night major press announcements that they're launching a ground attack into Gaza. And I'm really reading all over that that may have been basically a ruse. They did have tanks and things, but instead of their own troops, that basically it was a way to draw Hamas operatives out and to get them defending key places where there were tunnels and things like that. And then as a result of that, Israel sent in bombers and devastated a lot of the tunnels and a lot of their key munitions places that Hamas people were defending. Don't know the casualty numbers. Obviously, those are all human beings thinking they're fighting for God and doing the right thing, tragically on the wrong side.

You mourn their loss as well. But you know, with the violence within Israel now, Jews and Arabs fighting each other, previously they're side by side. It's a very dangerous volatile time now. Some rockets coming in from Lebanon and Syria. So Hezbollah sponsored by Iran. It's a volatile time. And Hamas is looked at as the protector of Jerusalem by many of the Palestinian people now. So we need the wisdom of God and God's in God's involvement to turn hearts and to bring about some type of temporary solution, lest there is much more bloodshed.

All right, let us go to CJ in Boise, Idaho. Welcome to the line of fire. Thank you very much for taking the call.

You're welcome. So I have a question about, so I am also a apologist, you know, very small and up-and-coming and all that, but my main area of interest has been the Old Testament, and specifically my salvation story has an awful lot to do with the Moses story, so I've always had a heart for Moses. And I've always had a heart for Moses. And I recently did a debate on the question, did Moses exist?

And I guess I should just be very blunt with it. I mean, if you were to search, did Moses exist debate, there is one and only one debate that shows up, and it's my own. And I find that to be very troubling, because Moses is second only to Jesus, it seems, in historical foundation for our faith, in being the one who receives Torah revelation and who spoke to God face to face, and all these other things, and yet it almost seems like a lot of the Church has just freely acknowledged that Moses either didn't exist or we don't have any way to prove it.

And I was just wondering, like, why do you think that is? Like, why have we relegated Moses to the King Arthur realm of historicity rather than to the Jesus realm of historicity? Well, your average Christian just knows he existed like he knows David existed or Solomon existed or Paul existed. I was never questioned.

Don't even think about it for a split second. And even the critical scholars that debated this over the centuries generally did not deny Moses' existence, they denied whether he wrote the Pentateuch as we have it. So, you know, you could read critical scholars talking about, did Moses write this or did Moses write that? So they too assumed that there was a historical figure named Moses. They just questioned whether he's the author of the Torah or all of it as was claimed. So the challenge is, this has not been a major point that we've been challenged on, you know, prove that Moses existed. The other thing is, so I don't agree that the church has generally put him in the King Arthur realm, they just all assume he's a historical figure. The other issue would be how would one prove his existence when we have almost no archaeological data from that time that would point to him specifically by name, but rather we have other evidence about tribes of Israel, you know, the Maneptah Stele, we have a constant witness through ancient Jewish literature that makes reference to him as a historical figure.

So the question would be, what would we be looking for as proof of his historicity? We come back, I've got a question for you, stay right here. It's The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown. Your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown.

All right, CJ, just back to you quickly. In your view, aside from the consistent testimony of generations of Israelites, Judeans, all assuming, understanding the foundational role played by Moses, what, in your view, is the strongest evidence of his historicity? Well, that's actually a really good question. I think there's a couple of things that I personally like to use, and they focus primarily on either the criterion of authenticity that the Church used for people like Jesus, or more specifically, some of these traditions. So like, for example, I would argue that the Passover is in evidence for Moses, because the Passover is a solemn, and one could argue, really non-celebratory holiday, that at least in its original fruition was somewhat miserable, and yet people followed it anyway because they had a firmly held belief that this event had occurred. And it seems to me like, you know, you look at Christmas, you can actually ask two questions with Christmas. What are you celebrating, and when did it start? But with Passover, those are actually one question.

You're celebrating the first time that you've had the Passover, right, when you've been in Sinai. So I find that to be really good evidence. I also would argue from legitimacy of the priesthood, where did the Levites get their priesthood, legitimacy, and then also... Yeah, so just to jump in, so I appreciate all that, and I'm glad you've given it thought, and keep working on it, and one thing when you get into apologetics, you always find areas that haven't been emphasized as much, or haven't been tackled as much, and then you could really, you know, specialize in those.

My point was, a lot of this is internal logic. It's unlikely that we're going to find something in the sands of Israel that mentions Moses by name, where there's actually written documents that are that old and have been preserved in that climate, etc. It's unlikely, and it's unlikely in Egyptian historiography that they will mention defeats or people by name in negative contexts that make them look bad. So even there would be an unlikely look, but if you've not yet read a book, I've recommended a few times already this week, Kenneth A. Kitchen's book on the reliability of the Old Testament. He's a top Egyptologist, Kenneth A. Kitchen, on the reliability of the Old Testament. That's worth looking at, and then James K. Hoffmeyer, a leading Egyptologist, also an evangelical Christian. James K. Hoffmeyer, the evidence for the Exodus and related books.

These are good sources if you haven't used them. Hey, CJ, thank you for the call. I appreciate it. I wish I had more time to talk with you. All right, let's go to our friend Eddie in Madison, Connecticut. Welcome to the line of fire. Dr. Brown, it's been a long time.

How are you today? All good, man, thank you. The Bible study, this was something that actually happened to one of the guys in our study, Dr. Brown. His family member, young guy, got married, 22 years old, married for a Christian family, married for six months, and the wife just walked out and said, I'm out of here.

Here's the papers, see you later. So now what's the response to that young 22-year-old kid who still says, I love women. According to Jesus, I'm dead. I can't do nothing unless she dies. So I said, listen, I don't know the answer to this, but what I'm reading here, if you do remarry, you're in trouble because you're committing adultery.

Now he's like, well, what do I do? My life's over. So I said, you gotta hope she dies. I don't know, imagine this, we're praying for death of the next wife.

I don't even know how to explain it, but it seems like it's so, he's looking at us saying, how fair is that? This girl walks out on me. Now, God, I gotta just stay in a room the rest of my life.

What do I do? Right, so first thing, yeah, yeah, first thing is, okay, buddy, it's not the end of the world. There are plenty of people in their 20s who are single, and you can live without sex for a little while.

So let's calm down. It's traumatic, it's terrible, it's devastating, but it's not the end of the world. There are plenty of people that love Jesus that are single in their 20s, in their 30s, they haven't met the right person, you know, for whatever reason. So focus on first, Jesus is enough. Jesus is enough.

Start there, that's the first thing. The second thing is, it's not over with this gal. God can bring her to repentance.

She can come back. Maybe there are changes God wants to bring in the guy. Now, the deal is that if she does get in a relationship with someone else, and then in that case is the one committing adultery, that I believe based on what Jesus has said in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19, that he can remarry, that she has broken the covenant there. And Paul even says in 1 Corinthians 7, if you're married to an unbeliever, so you're both unbelievers, you get saved, and then they don't want to stay with you, they leave, that you're not bound, meaning you'd be free to remarry. So I would look at that carefully in terms of understanding what Scripture says.

I would tell them, hey, first, it's not a panic. You live without sex either through your teen years and before you married this gal, right? You can live without sex for a little while after that intimate companionship.

God's more than enough. Look, I know people that have been single their entire Christian lives. They just never met the person to marry, and they've been single. I also know others that were divorced many, many years ago.

Same kind of scenario. The person worked out on them, and they said, well, I can't remarry, and God was more than enough for them the rest of their lives. But in his case, I would believe that she's either going to turn back in repentance or that her leaving him will ultimately open the door for him to remarry if she doesn't turn back.

And what I take advantage of now is as a single person to ask to pray for God to really work amazingly deeply in his own life and to pray for her and then see if God restores that. If not, then I believe there could be scriptural grounds for him to move on. But don't get all worked up over it. That's the big thing. Don't get all worked up. That's not God.

That's either our flesh or the devil. And may the Lord's grace work a miracle in this relationship. Hey, thank you for the call.

Let us go to DJ in Long Beach, California. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hey, how are you doing, Dr. Brown? Doing well, thank you.

Good, good. Hey, I just had a question for you. I wanted to get your deep, honest opinion. And that is, what do you think Leonard Ravenhill or even David Wilkerson, what do you think their message would be to the body of Christ today?

Yeah, having known them well, a close friend of Leonard Ravenhill the last five years of his life and preached for David Wilkerson dozens and dozens of times, I would say I knew Len much better than I knew David. But knowing them well enough to respond to this, I think their message would be exactly what it had been during their lifetimes, except on steroids, except all the more urgent, all the more broken. I believe David Wilkerson would be warning about judgment more loudly and clearly than he ever had, that Leonard Ravenhill would be exposing the superficiality and shallowness of the church and calling for repentance and revival like never before. So I believe their messages would be what we heard over the decades, but intensified because of the urgent crisis in which we find ourselves. You know, it's almost like there's someone kind of passed out on the couch, there's a fire in the house, and they're almost unconscious and you're trying to wake them up.

Well, when you hear the fire, you try to wake them up all the more urgently. And that's where I would see things now. In fact, I have a book coming out in October called Revival or We Die, where I quote both of them a number of times because of the intensity and focus of the message and saying, yeah, we need to hear that more now more than ever.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, I recently discovered those guys probably about a year ago, and I'm not of no judgment to a lot of ministers, but it's hard for me to even listen to mainstream Christian preaching these days, because like you said, the superficiality or it's almost as if it is not a time for games and, you know, have a better, you know, the best life you can ever have. And it's all smiles and prosperity. And no, it's, you know, I wrote End of the American Gospel Enterprise in 89, and that's the book God used to connect Leonard Ravenhill and me, and he wrote the forward to that.

And back then, that's 89. You know, I'm writing with urgency and looking past the superficiality of our church culture. There is a saying, don't know who said it. I quoted in the book, what began as a movement in Jerusalem became a philosophy in Greece, a monument in Rome, a culture in Europe, and an enterprise in America. And if the book, How Saved Are We, I think that was the first book of mine that David Wilkerson wrote, and that was 1990, and joined our hearts deeply together in that message. Have you heard his message on Anguish that's on YouTube? Yeah, it brings me to tears every time I listen to it. Exactly, exactly.

And that's the burden that we have to carry. The thing with both of them is they were men of great faith. David Wilkerson really over the years became a man of real compassion, and with that a real message of the love of God and the grace of God for hurting and dying world. And Leonard Ravenhill was intimate with Jesus, and he was so brokenhearted because he wanted the church to be ready and worthy of the Lord. But his great prayers brought great fruit. I believe it was his decades of prayer that helped birth the Brownsboro Revival, where I served from 96 to 2,000, and the birth to missions movement that bears fruit around the world. And of course, Times Square Church, Burning Bright, Teen Challenge is thriving around the world.

So their legacy continues. But thank you for the question. And friends, it's not over for America, but it's close. We need a great awakening. Awakening. Another program powered by the Truth Network.