Dr. Brown Tackles Your Toughest Twitter Questions

The following is a pre-recorded program. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Hey, friends. Welcome to The Line of Fire.

This is Michael Brown, delighted to be with you today. I am actually doing something right now, more right a few minutes before, a few minutes after, as you're listening to the broadcast, watching the broadcast. Something I've never done before in my life. That is, if you're viewing, listening live.

Something I've never done before in my life. A real neat, opportunity to glorify God and get a message out. And I'll tell you about it, doubling on Monday. But rather than taking your calls live today, I am answering questions that were posted on Twitter. I solicited them Wednesday night, Thursday morning, and now I'm answering them for you on this Friday broadcast.

So, no calls today, but I trust you'll be blessed. Just the same. Again, you may be watching a different day.

I'm listening a different day, but welcome to the broadcast. Okay. Anna Maria asks this. Anna Maria, is God's promise in Exodus 20-26, I believe she meant 23-26, women won't lose their babies and they won't be infertile. Just for Old Testament Israelites, does it apply to Christians at all?

How can we make sense of this passage? Okay. In the Torah, there are several promises given that were for the nation of Israel as a whole, based on obedience, based on worship, based on honoring the Lord.

And I focused on these because of my doctoral dissertation. In fact, we're going to start with Exodus 15-26. We're going to go there first. Exodus 15-26. I focused on these verses in my doctoral dissertation on the Hebrew root Rafa and the concept of healing in the Old Testament in the Ancient Near East. Exodus 15, God has just tested the children of Israel, the waters of Marah, bitter waters where they complained and then God made the bitter waters sweet.

And it says there, God made a statute with them. And Exodus 15-26 says this, God says to Israel, if you listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, if you do what is right in his eyes, pay attention to his commandments and keep all his decrees, I will put none of the diseases on you, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians, I am the Lord your healer. Now, what's interesting first is the diseases that were put on Egypt, they weren't just physical sickness, but they were plagues and disasters of other kinds. So they are all under the heading of makhalah, sickness, so plague, disaster, in terms of the wider usage. So all those, plagues that are put on Egypt, I won't put on you, for I am the Lord your healer. That's the first of those promises. So God's saying to Israel, if you will follow me in obedience as a nation, you won't be smitten with these diseases because I'm your healer.

So healing is not just the physical disease, but these other disasters as well. Exodus 23 verses 25 and 26. And God says there, if you will worship and serve the Lord your God, if you will not worship and serve the gods of the nations, right? But if you will worship, here, just, okay, we'll start here.

If you serve and worship, so the Hebrew avad can mean to serve slash to worship. Adonai, the Lord your God. He will bless your food and your water. So that's the first one. That's the first thing you need to be sustained, right?

Healthy water, healthy food. He'll bless your food and water. And then he says, I will take sickness from your midst, none will miscarry nor be buried in your land, and I will fill up the number of your days. So here's a promise. So when you pray in Hebrew, I'll pray those words of blessing.

So let's just think about what's written there. God says that he'll take sickness out of our midst. So once again, sickness understood in and of itself is a curse and negative thing. And none will miscarry or be barren.

Rather, you'll live a full lifespan. So this is all the fundamentals needed for life and sustenance, right? Food supply, water supply, healing of sickness or sickness removed from your midst, women able to reproduce, and full life, long life. That would be ideal if Israel as a nation obeyed the Lord. The last passage I want to look at is Deuteronomy chapter 7, verses 14 and 15. It says as a result, again, just as here in Exodus 23, as a result of Israel turning away from idols and destroying the idols in the land and worshipping the Lord alone.

He says in Deuteronomy chapter 7, beginning verse 14, you will be blessed more than any other peoples. There will not be male or female barren among you or your livestock. Adonai, the Lord will remove all sickness from you, and he will not inflict on you any of the terrible diseases of Egypt that you knew, but will inflict them on all who hate you. So once again, a promise to remove sickness and a promise of fertility. Equipping with Old Testament promises that obedience to the Lord would bring blessing, including healing, health, prosperity in terms of your grain, your fields would produce, and there would be no barrenness or miscarrying. Then as a judgment, sickness, premature death, barrenness, fields unable to reproduce, no crops, famine, drought, these were curses. So how do we apply this to ourselves as believers in the New Testament?

We have a better covenant based on better promises. To me, it's ludicrous to think that God promised Israel healing on a national level and sickness in and of itself. I'm talking about severe disease and coming as a result of divine judgment.

Not that everyone who's sick is under judgment, but when it does come as judgment, it is a curse, right? It seems ludicrous to me that under a new and better covenant that that which was a curse in the Old Testament becomes a blessing in the New. And that which is a blessing in the Old Testament becomes a curse in the New, so that healing was a blessing in the Old Testament under Sinai, but now it's a curse. Or that terrible sickness and disease, covenant curse, were now covenant blessing.

No, I don't see that at all. However, these were promises to corporate national Israel that we cannot just take and say, well, anything that was promised there is for me. What I would do is say, God, in your goodness to Israel, if I was a woman wanting to have children, I would say, God, you promised this to Israel.

This was part of your nature. This is an expression of your goodness. And it was a promise to Israel based on obedience. I'm asking you to do this for me based on grace. I'm asking you to provide a miracle in my womb based on grace.

If I were a woman unable to conceive, I would absolutely make an application of the principle based on the nature of God and say, Lord, do it for me today to glorify your name. And as it still remains, life, health, bless, these are good things from God. So I would absolutely not say I have a covenant right to it, but rather to say, Lord, through your grace, do even more now than you promised to do for Israel.

Okay. Messianic age. The response that the prophecy is conditional doesn't seem to work because scriptures elsewhere affirm its fulfillment. Right. So this is a passage that traditional Jews would raise to say, we don't need Jesus.

He's not the Messiah we're looking for. All we have to do is go back to observing the Torah. And it's accessible to us.

There's no reason why we can't do it. And then with that will come the full messianic redemption. I understand that reading. I would answer it in one of two ways.

One way is I agree with it. I agree with that view, but that rightly understanding the Torah and rightly following the Torah includes the Messiah. That to reject him and to reject how he fulfills the Torah is to nullify the Torah. So I would say it's not the way of traditional Judaism, but the way of scripture and the Torah showing Israel's failure, Israel's need for Messiah, Messiah's work of redemption and atonement, Messiah being the last great national prophet. And through him, we come to God, Messiah fulfilling the role of high priest.

So through him, we come to God. So there is a turning back to God, but it's Torah as expressed through Yeshua. He gives meaning to Sabbath, not Jewish tradition. That's one way you could read it. And I have a friend of mine, one of the world's top Old Testament scholars, that's the way he reads it. That Yeshua's interpretation of the Torah is the correct one, not the way of rabbinic tradition.

Here's another way to read it, though, which is this. When you look at the passage, okay, Deuteronomy 30. First, Deuteronomy 29, 29 affirms the secret things belong to the Lord our God, that which is opened and revealed belongs to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of the Torah. And then Deuteronomy 30, when all these things have come on you, right, the blessing and the curse, which have set before you, et cetera, you're scattered among the nations and you come to your senses and realize, okay, we've blown it. We've sinned. And then you turn back to the Lord.

Then you take that step towards him. Then the Lord will circumcise your heart and restore you to the land. It could also be read that that's part of the Sinai Covenant, which failed, that the Jewish people never did that, that to this day, we came back to the land, not through repentance, but through mercy. And the major pioneers leading the way were themselves not believers, which is why most of the religious Jewish world opposed it in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Sentiments changed in many ways after the Holocaust, but this was not the result of Jewish repentance.

This was purely the result of divine mercy. So the better answer or an alternate answer would be that this was never fulfilled and will never be fulfilled. It is under the Sinai Covenant and God's saying, here it is.

It's available. Turn, repent. And we still don't do it as a nation. And so he brings us back to the land purely in his grace and purely in his mercy. And you could make a good argument for that because if you read on after this in 31 of the chapters that follow, Moses is pretty much guaranteeing his people, you're going to disobey as long as I've known you disobey.

It's going to only get worse after my death. So the Torah then speaks to Israel and convicts Israel of guilt. The Torah fulfills its purpose by revealing our guilt, revealing our sin and God's perfection and showing how we've come under divine judgment and how no matter what we try to do to improve ourselves, we keep falling short. So now God has mercy and this is what he then does. That would be another way of reading. So one is it itself leads into New Covenant fulfillment through Yeshua. Another is it shows our failure for now. I'm putting us on the line of fire on this special edition today. I'm not taking calls. I am doing something special today I've never done before.

Hopefully a way that'll really glorify something that'll really glorify the Lord. Talk to you more about it. God willing on Monday, give you the update. Maybe post some things on social media over the weekend. We shall see. But I am answering questions that were posted on Twitter Wednesday night, Thursday morning, early Thursday afternoon.

So no need to call because we won't be taking calls today. Paulby asked this. Do you consider Genesis quotes to be accurate or editorialized by Moses, especially in regards to early patriarchs referring to Yahweh before Exodus 3? Also, should Genesis 4-1 be read, I have received a man, Yahweh.

Commentaries disagree. With regard to Genesis 4-1, no, it should not be translated, I have received or acquired a man, Yahweh, as if Eve thought that Seth, who was born after Abel had been killed by Cain, as if Seth was Yahweh incarnate, or they were expecting a divine incarnation. It certainly means with, with the Lord. I've received a man with the help of the Lord. So I've given birth to a male child with the help of the Lord.

That's all that's being said. As for Genesis quotes being editorialized by Moses, I would expect that if there is a direct quote that someone made that became famous, and Moses is quoting it as such, then that's how it's being related, accurately as spoken. If there are accounts that have been recorded as conversations, that these were either passed down orally or revealed supernaturally, you know, whatever you want to come up with, or a combination of both, the substance I would obviously have to believe to be true and accurate, otherwise it wouldn't be Scripture. But you're asking specifically about the use of Yahweh, whereas Exodus 3 or Exodus 6 in particular, God says that he was revealed previously as El Shaddai, that previously he wasn't known by the name Yahweh, or where he explains his name Yahweh, if we're pronouncing it correctly, in Exodus 3.

No, I do not believe that the name was unknown. I believe that the full revelation of that name does not come about until the Exodus. That God acting as Israel's covenant God does not come about at that time, and that he was primarily known in his person as El Shaddai, which may be the God of abundant provision in terms of power and might. By the way, there are all these ideas about Shaddai.

Some say he's the many-breasted God because the Hebrew word for breasts is Shaddaiim. Forget it. Nonsense. Those are female fertility deities. Forget that. You know, critics, well, it's related to shade, demon.

No, forget that, obviously. How about he's the goddess more than enough, Hebrew Shaddai. That's just homiletical. That's not the etymology of the word that would be homiletical. Why, then, do the ancient translators, Septuagint, for example, Vulgate, understand it to be almighty? And the best answer is it could be related to the Akkadian, Babylonian-Syrian word, shaddu, mountain, just like God has spoken of as a rock or a fortress, that is mountains, so it speaks of his power, his might, and in the patriarchal narratives, his miraculous intervention with children, etc., you know, out of barren wombs and God moving in that way. So perhaps being known as El Shaddai, but in terms of the fulfillment of his covenant, promises to Israel being known as Yahweh, that comes later. That would be the best way to read it. No, it could be that the name Yahweh was editorialized in because that's how we refer to him. In Moses' day, that's how he'd be referred to. Or later, editors change that because the same God being prayed to. But I personally don't read it like that.

I think that is a reflection that the patriarchs knew him by that name but did not experience the fullness of his revelation by that name. Yeah, now this one question generated a lot of controversy, and we're going to tackle it right here. James White. Yes, the James White, Dr. James White. He said, is it true that James White can whip you in a bike race even if he only used one leg? So I decided to respond to that here and now.

Of course, on the air now, too. I said, I'll answer that one here since it will be way too controversial for radio. This is what I tweeted back. But in Jewish style, answering a question with a question. So my tweet in response was, is it true that Michael Brown could whip James White in a Hebrew Bible reading contest using only one eye? So he responded, well, what say you? Is it true that James White could beat Michael Brown reading the CBGM data for Axe while riding his bike in 115 degree heat? So of course, I'm not going to be intimidated by James White. So I took him on. I said to my dear friend, just as true as it is that Michael Brown could beat James White in understanding Talmud commentaries while rowing in a freezing cold garage. To which he replied, ah, but would the rabbis allow you to read Talmud while rowing in a freezing cold garage?

That is the question of the ages. To which I responded with, indeed. Ah, then Peter responded, can we look forward to a video debate while you are both on your machines? I like that.

I'm going to click like on that. All right. A little bantering fun with my friend, esteemed apologist and theologian, Dr. James White and my great debating opponent.

But the great joy we have is when we debate side by side together. Ah, all right. Barry asked this question.

Now, interestingly, his bio, Jesus follower, Bible lover, avid learner, husband, grandpa, motorcyclist, two time cancer survivor, metabolic nutrition, global traveler, using my own. But, ah, okay. That's not a gay flag. Got it. Just okay. All clear. Okay. Barry's question. How do we address the issue of intersex people, especially when their chromosomes are different than their physical identity, a legitimate birth condition?

Okay. So this is 100% separate from gay activism. This is 100% separate from sexual orientation where a biological male says he's attracted to women. Or a biological female, excuse me, a biological male says he's attracted to men or a biological female says she's attracted to women.

Unrelated to that. It is unrelated to the vast majority of those who identify as transgender. The vast majority of those who identify as transgender are biological and chromosomal males who identify as females or females who identify as males.

The percentage of those people on the planet who are legitimately intersex, percentage is less than 1%. It is a physical, a real physical condition. Just like if you are blind in one eye. Just like if you have MS. Just like if you have rheumatoid arthritis.

It cripples your hand. It is a physical condition, but it is a condition that is in most cases manifest at birth or as then the person grows up, this condition that was with them from the start becomes evident. In other words, it may be that someone looks to be biologically male and then as they start to develop, they start to develop as a female.

Or the opposite is true. There are others that are born with ambiguous genitalia or dual genitalia. These would be all variations of intersex. And it's very complex. It requires tremendous compassion and sensitivity. I can't imagine some of the trauma that an intersex person has to live with, especially as they grow and they begin to develop differently. Now I know there's trauma. Emotional trauma is very real that transgender individuals suffer.

I'm not minimizing that. I'm simply saying that this is of a different kind because it is physical. It is not simply mental, emotional, psychological.

It is physical. So what do we do with such people? First, we need to really listen and understand their issues because in most cases, it's things we haven't been exposed to before. Because in most cases, people who are intersex end up living a certain way, appearing to be either fully male or fully female. And unless you really get close with them, you might not know there's anything else. I mean, how many people do you know that are intersex?

How many people have you met in your life? You wouldn't even know for the most part. So the first thing you want to do is sit down and find out what's the whole story?

What's the issue? And if the person is going through gender confusion, or like I don't even know if I'm male or female, am I same sex attracted or opposite sex attracted? Then you want to have much more compassion and understanding than you even would having compassion and understanding for someone that's same sex attracted or identifies as transgender who is not intersex. From what I understand, the best thing to do as the person is developing is to see are they predominantly male or female based on biology chromosomes?

If so, are they at home in that identity, within and without, then let's do what we can to reinforce that. If it's a clear mix, if you can't tell, should we identify this person as male or female biologically and chromosomally, then how do they feel? I've always felt like I'm a woman. I've always felt like I'm a man.

That's how I felt once I got through puberty. So if the biology and chromosomes could go either way or unclear, then the person's internal identity is important and you do what you can then to bring the physical to match that. But otherwise, where the physical is definite, where someone is definitely a biological male, you don't try to turn that person into a female, nor do you support same sex attraction. When you have the ambiguity of a case of intersex, we must be compassionate. We must do our best to understand. I know many intersex folks end up in the LGBT movement because they feel, hey, I fit here.

I'm not a freak here. I'm different, but I fit among different people. Let it be that you fit right here with us. 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. Welcome back to the special edition of You've Got Questions, We've Got Answers. Today I am taking questions that were posted on Twitter.

So I'm going to be responding to these questions and not taking calls and giving a bit more in-depth answer when I can to these questions. Here's one from Matthew. What is your take on the quantity of people the Bible describes as taking part in the Exodus? If we are to go with the numbers at face value that are given to us in the book of Numbers in particular, we have a census at the beginning of the wilderness wanderings and a census at the end of the wilderness wanderings. The estimate would normally be between two and three million people.

All right. Now, let's just think the modern state of Israel today has Israel proper that is accepted as the nation of Israel between the Israeli and Arab population or the Jewish and Arab population is what? About seven and a half million, somewhere around there, a little higher. And then the Palestinians living in Gaza and Judea-Semitic called the West Bank, that's another five, six million, whatever the numbers are exactly. Let's just say you have roughly 13 million people living there now. Parts are very crowded.

Other parts are still open. The idea of two or three million Israelites living there coming into the promised land is certainly not too high, not impossible, not unimaginable, and certainly fully sustainable. However, there are other questions that are raised, which is why, Matthew, you're raising this. Are those numbers to be taken literally? Would that be in keeping with the population in Egypt and how dominant the Israelites may have been in Egypt? Well, if they were that many, they certainly would have been a threat to Egypt and thinking, hey, they could just leave at any point or we're heavily dependent on them.

That would make sense. Is there any archaeological evidence of an exodus that large that many people? That would be one question mark. Another question mark would be the question of them being sustained in the wilderness, but that was considered miraculous from day one and God constantly pointed back to it as miraculous. Is there evidence of an invasion of the land of Canaan on a scale that would be that wide or the previous population groups in Canaan being that high? Again, that's a major question. And then the question is, when exactly did you date the exodus?

When did you date the conquest of Canaan? But many have raised questions that the numbers seem high. They are in keeping with the rest of Old Testament numbers. When you read the rest of the Old Testament that the nation of Israel being that size, it would be in keeping with that.

So my response is this. Either the numbers are as reported and we just don't have all the ancient evidence we'd like to have for it, but the numbers are as reported. Or that throughout the Old Testament that there is a way of writing numbers and signifying events and numbers of people, troops dying and things and people killed in war and things like that that was known in the ancient world, but that is not known to us today. In other words, scholars have looked at many, many numbers in the Old Testament. And, you know, some ask where it says Eliph. Does that mean a thousand or is it aloof? Is it the leader? It's just referring to a leader versus thousand, but then other things don't break down.

A colleague some years ago with a major Christian organization reached out to me with this very question. And I said, here are the answers I'm familiar with. He said, yeah, I've already looked at those and he sent me an article that went into massive detail. Look at every different way to try to read this.

Okay, this doesn't seem to make sense. And they went to battle and 50,000 were killed here. It's like, okay, that's a lot of people killed in one battle in one location. But the numbers are consistent, consistently high.

And then how are things written in other ancient and recent literature? And should the numbers be taken in face value? So it's a big question mark.

If it is literal, so be it. There's nothing saying it couldn't be. But it's a big question mark as to the high numbers throughout the Old Testament. They are consistent. It doesn't mean there's something we're missing or the numbers just are high and that's the way it was. So I appreciate the question.

I can't answer with anything more definitive than that. Okay, I'm just scrolling down to see how many questions there are here. Okay, Violet wants to know, what's your take on SBC 21, which I take to be Southern Baptist Convention 21? Southern Baptists had a great rise in membership some years back and now the membership has been going down. Some say it's because the group has been too political, too conservative.

Others claim it's because it's compromising. So I'm not a Southern Baptist. I'm not part of the SBC. I'm not speaking as an insider. But what is my take? I'll just say this. And look, I could take everything I'm saying here, not with a grain of salt, but just to say I'm not an insider.

I'm not an insider so I can only say so much. I think that positive steps have been taken to say, hey, we're holding to what we hold to our fundamental views, but we realize there are areas of weakness we've had. For example, do I think that Southern Baptists were right to reject CRT, critical race theory?

Absolutely. As a result of that, a number of prominent black leaders left. Is there a way to have found a joint voice that could have better said we continue to stand for racial reconciliation, we continue to stand for justice, we continue to recognize the Southern Baptist Convention's roots in slavery? Because remember, Southern Baptists arose to break with Northern Baptists because they were pro-slavery and Northern Baptists were anti-slavery. So is there a way they could have included more black leaders in a positive way to say, okay, when you hear CRT, what are you hearing?

Because when we hear it, this is what we're hearing. Were there better ways to say we're rejecting XYZ, can you agree with us that that's wrong? And can we be standing with you for greater sensitivity in areas of justice, etc.? Dealing with sexual abuse scandals and not sweeping things under the rug to say, no, we must deal with these things.

To me, it seems to be a positive election with Ed Litton, I believe, and a step in a good direction for the future. But others could come on, you know, tell me, Brown, you're dead wrong. You just don't understand what's going on there. And this is just about compromise and trying to be woke. That's not my perception. But do not take me as a major authority on this simply because I have not looked at the players well enough to be able to sort this out in sufficient depth.

If you meant something else by SBC21, sorry, I answered the wrong question. Okay, Woozypoo, why does so many evangelicals boast about their refusal to take the COVID vaccine with pastors joining them? In Romans 13, Veri Pliny tells Christians to be subject to governing authorities. Why is it not considered rebellion, thus bringing judgment on themselves? Okay, number one, we are not required by law to get the vaccine.

That's the first thing. We are not required by law to be vaccinated. So it's not about obeying authorities. We're not required by law to be vaccinated. Number two, there are very serious questions that are still being raised as to the long-term effects of the vaccine. That there may be negative health effects because of it. That there may be problems for women having children.

There may be problems with disorders coming up in the future, different sicknesses, disease, because it was not time to adequately vet it and test it, which would be at least 10, 12 years normally. And it's not like a typical vaccine. So there are many medical doctors saying, hey, we're not sure about this. So we're hesitant about people getting it. Why should children have to get it?

And things like that. So there are legitimate questions. Third, so first, the government is not commanded. Second, there are legitimate health questions. Third, if the government tells us to disobey our conscience, if the government ordered someone to have an abortion, if the government ordered someone to violate their own sacred convictions, in those cases, we have to say, sir, we have to obey God rather than man or be true to our own convictions, even if we're wrong and then we suffer the consequences. So that's the third thing.

If you genuinely believed that there were health risks associated with you taking this vaccine, if you genuinely believe that, would you be doing the right thing in God's sight to get your whole family vaccinated? I think not. Fourth, those evangelicals who would seem to be boasting about this, it could just be foolishness. It could just be carnality.

It could just be snubbing their nose at the government. It could be presumption. I don't need this. God's going to protect me.

I don't need this. Which, again, can be presumptuous. Or it could be evangelicals saying, look, you're just messing with our lives. You tell us we can't gather together in a building to worship, but the supermarket is packed with people, planes are packed with people, liquor stores are packed with people, abortion clinics are packed with people, but we can't come together in a building and worship. If we're a casino in Nevada that seats 3,000 people, it can be half filled. That's fine. If we have a church building that seats 3,000, we can't have more than 50 people in it. Abortion clinics and liquor stores provide essential services, but churches don't. Come on!

Come on! So these kinds of arguments can be raised to say it's government overreach. The vaccine is government overreach. And as God-fearing people who love our liberties and want to preserve our liberties, we are not going to partake in this.

So if someone boasts it in a carnal foolish way, that's unfortunate. Or if they haven't seemed sensitive to others who believe the vaccine is very important, who feel they're not walking in love or showing love for their neighbor by not getting vaccinated, then just with humility and grace you explain your reasons. For those who say, come on, this pushback has gone way, way too far, then this would be some of the reasoning behind not getting the vaccine.

And more and more data comes out, the more it seems that it could be a fine choice to not get it. Let everyone work it out, study it out, come to their own conclusion before God and before people. All right, we'll be right back. Thanks for joining us today on the Line of Fire.

We've got one last segment to take questions, a bunch of great questions that were posted on Twitter Wednesday night, Thursday morning, Thursday afternoon, and I'm answering now on today's broadcast. Andre asks this, why did God allow 80% of Christians to believe in a pre-trib rapture? Well, I don't accept the premise of the question, number one. Throughout church history, no one ever heard of a pre-trib rapture until around the 1830s. In terms of the system of dispensationalism, as we know it today in pre-trib rapture, nobody heard of it. So throughout church history to the 1800s, nobody heard of it. And around the world, there are plenty of Christians who haven't heard of it and who don't believe in it. And right to this moment, despite the popularity of the belief, there are multitudes, certainly more than 20%, that don't hold to it and hold denominations that reject it.

So of course it's not 80%. That's one thing. But as to why God allowed so many to believe things, the Word is the Word. And then there have been all kinds of errors through church history. Early Christians were deceived by the Gnostics. Early Christians embraced false gospels and fell away from the faith.

There have always been challenges. Look, through much of church history, if you're an evangelical or just a Protestant, you would say that much of church history with dominance of the Catholic Church, there was tremendous error. If you're a Catholic, you'd have to say that at least half the church worldwide is an error because it's not Catholic. And if you're Protestant and you think Catholics and Greek and Russian Orthodox are an error, then you'd have to say that. That half of the church, or over half, is not right. So you're always going to have these groups here. Around the world, the vast majority of believers today, of Protestant believers, are charismatic Pentecostals.

But in America, you still got large numbers that are not. What does that prove? It proves that we've got to get in the Word. Say, Father, what does your Word say?

What does your Word say? And do our best to understand it accurately. Also, there were some positive things restored with pre-trib teaching, namely the excitement about the return of Jesus and the sense of Jesus could return in my lifetime, which is often lacking as people just put the return of Jesus off. So it's good they came out of it, but in the midst of error. Hey, thank you for the question.

Ah, all right, let's see. Rob, how do you discern truth from all the YouTube Christian videos? Some imply that many, many Christians will find themselves in hell because of wrong living.

Others talk about having a personal tour of both heaven and hell. First, spend more time in the Word and growing in the fundamental knowledge of God than watching lots of YouTube videos on lots of opinions. That's one great way to avoid being deceived, is to spend more time in the Word and then more time majoring on the majors. Majoring on the majors.

What are the fundamental emphases of Scripture? Well, study those. Focus on those.

Grow on those. And then be very careful with teachers that claim to be the accurate ones while damning everybody else. Somebody sent me a link to a popular YouTube channel and the guy was branding me as a heretic, etc. And then I noticed he had branded just about every other leader out there as a heretic. I mean well-owned evangelical leaders.

Leaders respected throughout the body. So I thought, hey, I'm in good company here. I feel bad for the guy. Now, is he therefore not saved? God's his judge, not me.

But the elitist, you know, we're right and everybody else is wrong. Always beware of that. Always beware. And then don't base anything doctrinally on somebody else's claims of personal revelation. God showed them heaven.

God showed them hell. Is it true? Examine it by the Word. And if it reinforces what's written on Scripture, well, Scripture already said it. If it's different, it could be real. Maybe the person really had the experience.

Just put it as a question more. That's all. But don't base your own life on that.

Don't base doctrine on that. That gets based on the Word. So if you major on the majors.

Here, look at it like this. Let's say you're working out and you go through basic cardio things, basic lifting things and getting healthier, stronger, etc. And then someone says, hey, I've got these exotic exercises to try and I just learned you're supposed to like help this one thing in this unique way. And you start doing them. The next thing you get all, you know, things pulled out of joint and soreness here and you can't walk there.

It was just, hey, just major on the majors. Stay with the things that are that are productive and healthy a thousand times more when it comes to the fundamentals of the Word. If you stay more in the middle, it's going to be harder for you to get picked off on the extremes. Handsome Tom, can you speak on how inspiration works? Where does the author's emotion, opinion, historical narrative and inspired scripture begin? I fully believe in inspiration and inerrancy.

I'm just curious how it works. God bless. I believe to the biblical author that they were not always conscious of writing God's words. For example, someone might have been recording history. You know, Luke did his study, got to the sources as best as possible, and then felt he was doing something important, putting this together. Now, did he feel the same level of inspiration that a prophet might have that got caught up and saw God in vision and said, this is what the Holy One of Israel says?

I wouldn't think so. But God superintended Luke's words so that what he wrote were God's words. God superintended Paul's letters. He might have been really burdened as he wrote, but he wasn't consciously writing scripture in the same way that Moses was writing down the Book of the Covenant in Exodus 24. He would write these words. He knew he was writing God's words. But God superintended his writing. So when it comes to scripture, Paul might have been moved on to write a letter and wrote it with apostolic authority, guarding every word. But it was God who superintended and intended that word to give us his very words.

Or, another example. When, let's say Isaiah is put into the Book of Isaiah. There could be final editors and things like that. Let's say Jeremiah.

And then you'll have final editors, whatever. But let's just say there are parts that he himself was involved with arranging with Baruch in a certain order. So there's one that there's a narrative account about Jeremiah in the third person.

Well, obviously he didn't write that. But whoever wrote that, or if Jeremiah wrote it in the third person, that'd be written in a different level of inspiration, just writing historical facts and anecdotes versus when the Holy Spirit moved on to speak. And yet, equally, we have God's words. But one is, thus saith the Lord speaking, and another is just giving us an accurate account of history. You know, someone once made the claim, look, if light comes through a window and that light is refracted, it's no longer the same light, so it may have started as God's word, but when it comes through a human being, it's not the same light. And then the answer is, unless God so constructed the window that the light came through it just the way he wanted, so we ended up with those words.

So I don't know that the authors were equally conscious of what they were writing being inspired, but God oversaw the work, moving with supernatural inspiration in one case, in meticulous care in another case, to produce what we have as God's word in writing the Scriptures. Exposing Christians 101, you think God would, whoa, hang on, let's just get rid of that, block this person, whoa. Okay, that was absolute trash that we got to that, yikes. Okay, as I read down further, all right, so I should have noticed by the exposing Christians thing, I thought it was something else. Any other questions here?

Inspiration, COVID, SBC21. Ah, Emmanuel, do you believe in the literal six-day creation of Genesis and the young earth? And in my opinion, a lot of Christians are afraid to take the stance because they're scared to defend it against what's the sake of the world, and most scientists say, yeah, Emmanuel, I've addressed this many a time on the air, and thank you for your question. I agree that there are Christians who say, hey, it literally speaks of a six-day creation, that's the most natural way of reading it, but science is against it, I don't want to be ridiculed, so there must be another way to read it. I believe there are some who do that, but I believe there are plenty of others, like astronomer Hugh Ross, who came to faith as a scientific man, you know, in his college days, I think, reading the Bible and saying, wow, what the Bible says is in harmony with science, and he does not believe in a literal six-day creation. But this is part of him coming to faith through scriptural narrative, especially outside of Genesis 1. So there are others who sincerely believe in an old earth because that's what they believe the Bible teaches. On my end, as a non-scientist trained in the biblical text, I truly believe the text can be read either way. It is primarily there not to teach us science, but to teach us about God. There are even many parallels between the creation account in Genesis 1 and the building of the tabernacle, and some have argued, you know, John Walton and others have argued that this is God creating the universe and the earth as his tabernacle, etc., and the parallels are there.

I wouldn't necessarily make that argument, I've challenged it at other times, but looking into it more deeply these days, but for sure, it's there not primarily to teach us science. It's there to teach us about God, so I want to read that chapter to learn about the God of Israel. I want to read that chapter to understand who he is, how he operates, what he does.

I want to see how he brings light out of darkness, how he brings order out of chaos, how he causes everything to reproduce after its kind, how it creates human beings in his image. That's what I want to understand, reading it. If it does speak of literal six 24-hour days, so be it. I'm not a scientist, then science will have to make sense of it, and over as the years go on, science will learn more to confirm it. If it's not saying that, fine, maybe most science is wrong in terms of the, is right in terms of the age of the universe, etc. I don't know, but based on a non-scientific approach and simply looking at the text, you do not need to hold to a six-day creation just based on Genesis 1. Either way, it is primarily there to teach us about God.

I would not get into science debates primarily because it's not there primarily for that. All right, you have a blessed weekend. You're going to be back with you on Monday. Jesus is Lord.