Dr. Brown Answers Your Toughest 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. Welcome, welcome, friends, to The Line of Fire. This is Michael Brown, delighted to be live back with you in studio. I hope you enjoyed this special week of taking you into live debates that we've had, but phone lines are open now.

It is yours truly in person, live. So 866-34-TRUTH. Phone lines are open.

A perfect time to get in now. 866-348-7884. Any question of any kind on any subject we touch on in The Line of Fire, any area of expertise I have where I can be of help to you, minister to you, strengthen you.

That's why we are here. 866-348-7884. Before I go to the phones, I've got in my hands. I can't hold it up just because of the wrong color for the screen.

You won't see it properly. But it is an advance copy of my newest book, Revival or We Die. A Great Awakening is our only hope. I am really excited about getting this into your hands.

You know, just like I've been excited to tell you about Dr. Stangler's health supplements, knowing that they'll benefit you, they'll help you if you take them and couple them with a healthy diet. Well, in the same way, I am really excited to get this book into your hands. This is the last day to preorder the hardcover signed copy. We hope to have them in any day.

COVID has messed up all publishers and printing schedules have gotten a little funny. We hope to have these in very soon to sign and send out with you. So this is an exclusive hardcover edition of Revival or We Die. I feel very confident as you read this book, you'll be stirred. Something will burn fresh inside of you so you can preorder the book.

And with that, there will be a special video download as well. Go to the website now, askdrbrown.org, askdrbrown.org. Get as many copies as you want if you want me to sign them to multiple people. My joy to do that. OK, without further ado, we go to the phones and we'll start over in England with Josh. Welcome to the line of fire. Hello, Dr. Brown. Hey, sir. I'm a Christian.

Hello. I'm a Christian. I'm currently studying the Jewish objections to the Christian faith and I'm delving deep into the objections about the Messianic prophecies. So one of the prophecies that I'm having trouble with is Isaiah 714, which says, it says in Hebrew, L'chen yiten Adonai hu l'chem oth, inneh almahara o yolei d'tben, o karash sh'moah immanu el. Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call him his name, immanu el. I have like five or six difficulties with this verse, but for the sake of time, I'd like to ask you about two of them.

They're slightly related, basically, if that's OK. Sure. And so the first the first issue that I have is that I read the context of this verse and it's talking about a war situation that has the key to do that. The original context is the Cyril-Ephraimite war around 735-734 B.C. That's the context of the prophecy and the prophecy must have relevance and meaning for that day. No question about it. So we start there.

So my understanding is that, yeah, as you said, there is a first fulfillment or there's a fulfillment related to that situation where God is promising or is giving a sign to Ahaz to remind him that as you witness this child who is to be born growing up and so on, and you've named him Immanu El or your wife or whoever it is that will name him Immanu El, that you will remember that God is with us as this war comes to an end. Now, that's right. Different with you. That's right.

Different. It's a word of rebuke to Ahaz. It's a word of promise to the remnant, but a word of rebuke to Ahaz. Remember, Isaiah goes there with his son, Sha'ar Yashuv, which means the remnant will return or repent. He has refused the sign from God. And now God gives a sign to whom? To the house of David. Yes. Not just to Ahaz, but to the house of David in the plural.

Right? L'chaim. To you. He's saying L'chaim. Right. Exactly. And it's so the point is, just to fine tune this, it is a word of promise to the nation or to the remnant, but a word of rebuke to Ahaz. Now, let's just sharpen this a bit more.

Yeah. What did the alliance want to do? They wanted to remove Ahaz and set up Ben Taveel, which is probably just a pun of a name, but a worthless one, on the throne. So this would disrupt the house of David, which is mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, then in verse 13, and then your father's house a few verses later. The only other time house of David's mentioned in Isaiah is in Isaiah 22. So this is a very focused word to the house of David. It's a rebuke to the faithless king. And basically what's implied is God's going to raise up somebody better for the house of David than you. So there's a promise to the people of God being with them through hardship and trouble, or to the remnant at least.

But I take this as a word of rebuke to Ahaz, that God has a replacement coming for you. But otherwise, in context, it does have to happen within a certain period of time, within before the child can choose good or evil, so maybe 10, 12 years, that this judgment. Right. So that's the first part of the prophecy. The first level of fulfillment has to happen within that time period.

Yes. So that's all I understand. I've read it in your book.

And I'm with you on this. My problem is this idea of the dual fulfillment of certain prophecies, where it seems like in the context or in that historical context, God is promising or giving certain prophecies that are... I mean, in this case, the prophecy seems to be about something that will happen a few years later, like the child will need nine months to be born, then a few years later, as the child is a toddler getting to know how to choose good and evil, these things will be fulfilled. But then if the second fulfillment as the traditional Christian understanding of it is that it's going to be in Yeshua, how does the rest of the context, such as by the time the child knows the good and evil, how does that apply to Yeshua? If number 14 applies to Yeshua, how come 15 and 16 seem to be... I find it difficult to apply to Yeshua.

Right. So the whole thing is when you look at an immediate and a distant fulfillment, the distant fulfillment will often be the larger theme. So for example, Psalm 2, if you look at rabbinic commentaries, many will say this is a psalm about David and the Messiah, or Numbers 24, the scepter that will come out of Israel, Judah, but Israel there specifically, I see him, but not now. So rabbinic commentary, I see him, that's David, but not now, the Messiah. So this near and distant fulfillment is something even the rabbis recognized.

Why? Because much of what was supposed to happen at that time didn't happen. The same with Isaiah 9, 5 in Hebrew, 6 and 7 in English, many rabbinic commentaries recognize that about the Messiah. The Targum, the Jewish translation paraphrase of the synagogue days in Jesus' time, recognizes that being about the Messiah, but when you read many other commentaries, they think it's a celebration of the birth of Hezekiah.

So my understanding of messianic prophecy is that there was tremendous anticipation and expectation with the new Davidic king that this could be the anoint, this could be the ruler that does it, and that there were even prophetic words spoken when those words did not fully come to pass. We don't even know who Immanuel was. In terms of the Old Testament, nobody knows who he was.

Nobody knows who his mother was. To this day, there's not a human being on the planet who can tell us with certainty in Isaiah's day who the mother was, who Immanuel was himself. And then when you go on to the beginning of the eighth chapter, the prophecy about the birth of Mahershalaq, that seems to take the exact place. And many commentaries think it's the same person. And then many other commentaries say Immanuel is actually the child born in the ninth chapter, and there's parallel language and things to point in that direction. So my understanding is that Matthew looks at Isaiah 7, Isaiah 9, and Isaiah 11, as you know from my book, and he sees this as another messianic prophecy.

This is a promise to the house of David that has an immediate fulfillment, but we don't even know what and how. It's almost intentionally obscure. Even the almah does not specifically mean virgin. It's still striking because it's surprising, as Rashi says, that an almah will conceive and have a baby. That's striking. And then elsewhere, in Song of Solomon, Rashi says that the alamot, the almah in the plural, those are virgins.

So it's very interesting. Even a modern rabbinic commentary says she was a very young girl. You know, the wife was a very young girl. Well, very young girls don't have children. So it would be something striking like, what?

She had a child? And then its ultimate fulfillment, when the full meaning comes, it doesn't have to have the historical context to it, just like all the other prophecies, all the other things with a greater fulfillment. The larger promise of who this person will be, who this Davidic king will be, what he will do, that's what's realized. The historical context is just the seed in which it was planted. And that's the nature of prophecy. One last example for you. Ezekiel 36, the prophecy of coming out of exile, right?

And then immediately followed by the dry bones vision, and then it goes into Gog Magog. Well, some of that applied to the Jewish people coming out of Babylonian exile. But that's absolutely the historical context in the beginning. But most of what was promised didn't come to pass, even though the immediate context is absolutely Babylon. The same with Jeremiah 30-33, the absolute context is Babylon. But a lot of what was promised, even Jerusalem will never be destroyed again, that was in the context of coming back from captivity in Babylon in the 530s, and yet Jerusalem was destroyed again historically. So it's not just messianic prophecy you have to do this with, it's many other prophecies about Israel's final destiny. The immediate fulfillment has a historical context, the larger fulfillment brings everything to pass in a new context.

I understand. I still have a slight problem with this take on the text. You mentioned Psalm 2, that certain rabbinic commentary say that, well, it's about David and it's about the coming Messiah, so there's a Jewish Jerusalem. Well, I understand that the genre of the text is poetry, and so there are no specific historical events that are being described. But it's a coronation psalm. In other words, we read it now like that, but it was written in history back then. It was recited as a coronation psalm for different kings in history.

But still poetry and a lot of imagery. But in this specific case, there's only one verse that Christians take, or basically Matthew takes, as referring to Yeshua. By the way, if I seem to be confrontational, it's because I really want to get to the answer here.

I'm really digging deep into this. But from the Jewish objection's perspective, is that... All right, stay right there. We'll finish on the other side. Hey, everyone, thanks for your patience.

I'm in the process of potentially rewriting a whole monograph on this, and in my Isaiah commentary I'm working on, I spend a ton of time on this, so I've been so focused on this. I'm totally with Joseph and getting clarity here. All right, we'll be right back. Stay right there. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on The Line of Fire, 866-34-TRUTH number to call. All right, I'm going to get to as many calls as I can, but I want to stay with Josh another moment here. Hey, Josh, what's your own faith background, by the way? You said you're Christian. Yeah, yeah, I come from a Syrian Christian background.

Okay, yeah, I was just wondering about the accent background. No, I love the pushing and the probing. It's very helpful, and it will get us...

So finish the... I understand the problem, but restate it one more time. Yeah, so the point is that if there is a dual fulfillment from that context, I understand that if you take Psalm 2 as poetry, you can interpret it in so many ways. There are no specifics in the poetry, even though it was a coronation poetic text, but still, the text in Isaiah 7 is very specific. There's only one verse, and that is 7-14, that Matthew quotes, and from the Jewish perspective, when they object to this, is that Matthew is misquoting and taking things out of context. And so it seems like the only verse that you can use for Yeshua is 14, but everything else, especially about that child, about Immanuel, 15, 16, and the whole context doesn't apply in any way, shape, or form. And so that's the difficulty I'm having. Like, what is the right way of describing this to a Jewish person?

Yeah, let me try to help you with that. First, if you look at Talmudic and rabbinic references to Messianic prophecies, Matthew's is the most sober thing you've ever seen compared to the way things are quoted in terms of pulled out of context and pulled in every different direction. You'd be shocked.

You'd really be shocked. You know, allusions and midrashic things and homiletical interpretations, and I mean, Matthew stands out for his sobriety and use of the text. All right, so what Matthew is understanding is that this is a promise to the house of David, all right, and that there will be a king who will embody Immanuel, God with us, who later we find out these titles have spoken of in the ninth chapter and the one on whom is the spirit in the eleventh chapter. Matthew sees that whoever that child was, that promise to the house of David was never fulfilled, and therefore there must, this was a promise not just to Achaz in a historical context, but a promise to the house of David that was never fulfilled. Therefore, it must still be fulfilled when Yeshua, now born of an Alma in the fullest sense of the word of a virgin and who himself is God with us. There's no possible way he could read that text without saying it's found its fulfillment. So it's the seed is birthed in historical soil.

It promises to grow. Sorry, sorry, I didn't get it. Are you saying that Immanuel, the first one, or in that context, was never born? No, no, he was born, but whoever he was, there was more to the promise.

That's why you never hear about it. That's why there's no reference to him, and that's why the whole time frame is now taken up in the eighth chapter with Maharsha Achashbas. It seems a completely unnecessary prophecy. What is more to the promise? That he will actually be Immanuel, God with us. But the promise was about the land being emptied. Right, but that was true. The whole situation coming to an end, right?

No, no, no. That was the historical context of when he would be born. The promise was that he would be born, that this child would be born to an Alma who would be Immanuel. That's the promise. The rest is the time frame in which it happens.

Now, what does it say? By the time he will do this, the land will be forsaken? Well, that's true. Was that true when Jesus was born? That was true 50 years later, 100 years later, 200 years later?

Yes. So that condition remained the same. That didn't change. But it's the promise.

That's the key thing you need to lean into. What was promised? Matthew sees that whatever was promised about that child never reached its fulfillment until Yeshua came for the house of David. OK, I'm going to just quickly state my second problem with this really quickly, if you don't mind.

OK, go ahead. If there is a double fulfillment, there is Alma during the time of Ahaz and Alma, which is Virgin Mary. So was the first Alma a version? No, no, that's the whole thing. There were not two fulfillments. There's partial fulfillment, partial fulfillment and fulfillment. You can't have two fulfillments.

You can't fill the glass twice. The first one was born of an Alma, a young woman, strikingly. OK, that was you wouldn't expect her to have a child, but she did. The Alma through whom the Messiah came was Alma in the fullest sense of the word, a virgin. Alma does not exclusively mean virgin. There's certainly no evidence of it meaning a married woman or woman that's had children already.

There's no evidence of that. So the whoever was that's the whole thing. The beginning is partial. So there was there were not two virgin births. Alma most specifically speaks of a virgin, but doesn't have to. But it had to be something striking.

Yeah, yeah. All the fulfillments, just like the deliberate, all almost all of the Old Testament fulfillments are partial. Israel coming out of Egypt, partial in the first fulfillment, like what was fulfilled partially and what was that he was born, that there was a child who was born to an Alma, to it, to a young woman, strikingly, surprisingly, one that you wouldn't think was able to have a child, as Rashi says, that his name was Emmanuel and that that that was his name. But he did not embody who Emmanuel was. We don't even know who it was.

There's not even a reference to him. Is that what Rashi says that that didn't happen? Oh, no, no, no, no.

No, no. Others say that some think it was Hezekiah. Others don't think it was Hezekiah. Some think it was Mahershala Hashbaaz. Some think it was the son of Ahaz. Nobody knows for sure.

None of the commentaries know for sure. I'm going to end it here. I'll be listening again and studying your response again. And maybe next time I'll call.

I have more problems with this verse, particularly. Yeah. But yeah, I like to hear so I don't take too much time.

But really, thank you very much. Oh, hey, Josh, let me just say this. I have been so focused on this.

And as I said, I actually have a proposal to write a whole monograph on it, plus writing Isaiah commentary. So I have Doug and Doug and Doug and Doug. And when you understand the concept of fulfillment, just think of it like this. That's why I took extra time. I apologize to other colleagues because I never do this on a Friday.

It's been so much time. So just take this as an honoring of your seriousness and wanted to get this right. Think of this as like threads that are just hanging. You're reading the scriptures like, well, who was this? How did this what what actually happened?

Who was this child? Or when you go read Ezekiel thirty six. Right. And then thirty seven. And think, OK, when this must be Babylonian exile. But it only partly happened. There was a historical context. When you come back to the land, then you're supposed to have a new heart.

And this and this and this. Read Jeremiah thirty thirty three to thirty three. All the things are supposed to happen.

Only some of them happened. So it's this whole thing with the Hebrew Bible that some of what was promised happened, but the rest didn't. And then when to me, if I was Matthew reading this, it would so jump off the page to me.

I was like, how how was this missed? And I feel confident that it's one of the things that you should open the disciples eyes to. And that's you. Twenty four. Hey, bless you, Josh.

Keep studying and we will interact again. God willing. Eight six six three four truth. Let's go to Joseph in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi there, Dr. Michael Brown. How are you today? Doing well. Thank you.

Wonderful. So my question this time is regarding Matthew chapters one and two. There is a reference to an angel of the Lord that appears to Joseph. And basically, my question is, I know a lot of commentators and people who study scripture believe that Jesus is actually the angel of the Lord. That is throughout the Old Testament. And so my question is, with the angel of the Lord being referenced again in Matthew one and two. And yet Jesus has already been in the womb of Mary. How does this connect to what is commonly known as the thought of the angel of the Lord? Yeah, it's a great question, but it doesn't connect.

In other words, it's a totally legitimate question, but it doesn't connect. Number one, not every time that it speaks of the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament is it speaking of the Son of God, speaking of Jesus. In some clear cases it is, like Exodus three being one of the clearest of all, but it's not always. And we know there are many angels that God sent, right?

Some with names Michael. So here and there, there is a distinct one, the angel of the Lord, who is the messenger. I just want to grab the verse that we're looking at here. So in Matthew one, it's not talking about the Son of God being the angel there, it's just an angel. And we know that the angel that was doing most of the communication at that time was Gabriel, right? He's the one that appears to Zechariah in Luke one, he's the one that appears to Mary in Luke one. So this is just an angel, a messenger. Could have been Gabriel, but it doesn't tell us by name. So it certainly was not Jesus here on earth and the Spirit of the Son of God coming in angelic form.

Certainly wasn't that. And again, don't think that every time it says the angel of the Lord or an angel from the Lord that it has to refer to the Son of God. That's not the case. There is a scholar that I watch quite a bit, and I have two of his books, and he actually has an interesting thought, and that is that the word of the Lord actually represents Jesus as well. Like, for example, when the angel of the Lord spoke to Elijah, and then he then speaks to the Lord again on Mount Sinai or Mount Horeb, and he basically believes that the word, because in John it says in the beginning was the word, that the word of the Lord is actually the Lord Jesus in those passages.

Yeah, I mean, there are some. I have a colleague that read the scripture like that as well, that wherever it says the word of the Lord came to, that it was actually the Son of God coming to someone. I don't read it like that myself.

I don't see that. You know, we know there are plenty of aspects of the word of the Lord just in terms of God's words, what he communicates. In other words, it's not that everything that God ever communicated is there for the Son of God speaking because he's the Word made flesh.

Rather, there are times when God comes to manifest himself, make himself known, and that's what he does through the Son. Hey, Joseph, I appreciate the questions very much. We'll be right back. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on the Line of Fire.

I am so excited to be back live in our home studio. I hope you enjoyed the excerpts from debates that we played for you during the week. If you missed any of them, just go back to our YouTube channel, Ask Dr. Brown, A.S.K. Dear Brown, or our website, AskDrBrown.org.

866-348-7884. You can still preorder the signed, numbered, hardcover edition. This is special printing we hope to get in any day from Destiny Image. My brand new book releases next week, Revival or We Die, with a special video download to go with it. I am confident this book will stir your heart as you read it and ignite something fresh in you to revive your own life and to believe for revival in the church and with that America shaken for the gospel, for the good.

So go to AskDrBrown.org. Right on the home page, go ahead and order as many copies as you want. If you're part of a congregation, your local church, get one for your leaders there.

Get one for friends. I know this book will minister to you as you read it because I know how the Lord ministered to me as I wrote it. All right, we go to the phones.

866-34-TRUTH, starting with our buddy Eddie in Madison, Connecticut. Welcome to the line of fire. Dr. Brown, great to talk to you today. How you doing? Doing great, man.

Thanks. Here's the issue we had this past week. We were talking about—it's almost twofold, Dr. Brown—the ending of Mark 16. And I said, I don't think that's the real ending, but if it is, Jesus said, these are the signs—and the sign is something you see, I think, like a stop sign— he said these are the signs that believers are going to do. Speak in tongues, healings, cast out devils. And then you got the two that nobody sees. So you say, Lord, what signs are these that nobody sees?

Drinking poison and picking up serpents. So I said to the group that we're talking to, I said, guys, the only problem I have with this, and I could be 100 percent wrong. You hear Dr. Brown's teaching on the gifts for today.

If you go in the charismatic church, Dr. Brown, tongues is 98 percent of people are doing that, 95 percent are believing in healing, devils are being cast out, but then you go to those last two, and you don't even hear of them, or you don't even see them, and you don't even hear them talked about. So you say, wait a minute, wait a minute. Was this the real ending of Mark? Was this some guy adding it to make it a better ending? I've never seen a sign of a guy with a serpent or drinking poison. I wouldn't even know how I would see that. In order to see it, it would almost be like, hey, look, guys, I'm drinking. If a guy drank poison on the side behind his garage, how am I going to know that's a sign?

A sign is, guys, here's a sign. So you have churches, Eddie, like in West Virginia in particular, but some other places where they actually try to do this. You know, they're going to handle snakes. This is a sign of their faith, or they're going to drink poison. And some are supernaturally protected. Others have died tragically. And then because they don't believe in doctors, they've died agonizing deaths.

It's very sad. My understanding is that, no, it's not the original ending of Mark, but I do believe it preserves authentic words of Jesus. Now, we know in the book of Acts, in the last chapter of Acts, Acts 28, that Paul's bitten by a serpent, and everyone thinks he's going to die, and when he doesn't, they're all shocked. So it is recorded that that happened.

The question is, does it happen more? That drinking deadly poison won't affect him. I have heard testimonies, one I heard from someone that knew the family personally, of a believer, a Palestinian believer in a Muslim family, came to faith. And when he came to faith, his father was going to kill him, as the honorable thing to do, because he wouldn't deny Jesus. So he had him over for a meal and poisoned him. And when his son drank the poison, ate the poison, and was completely untouched, the father became a believer.

So perhaps this happens more than we realize. The taking of serpents could well be a spiritual metaphor. You know, in Luke 10, 19, Jesus says that we'll tread on serpents and scorpions.

That's the language of Psalm 91. That could have to do with our spiritual authority, and that would be something demonstrable, where the gospel goes into an area and powers of darkness are broken in Jesus' name. So although it literally happened to Paul, and it may also happen more often, you know, we have a friend in India who was bitten by a cobra twice and survived that. You know, it's massive. I'm laughing at the intensity of the world they live in, but the cobra was in the wall of the house, and personally, these two massive wounds on their body.

It was crazy. So it could be just in our world it doesn't apply as much. It's certainly nothing that we attempt to do to prove something, any more than we get somebody infected with sickness so that we could pray for them. But one of two answers. One, it happens more than we realize in different settings in different parts of the world. Or two, the last thing about taking up serpents is mainly understood metaphorically because of the language that we have in other places. So I believe it's authentic and real, and we do see some of it, again, outlined that it happened to Paul as well in the book of Acts. That's how I understand it.

Real words were not to do the snake handling thing to prove something, but this has happened around the world many times and has been demonstrable, and there are testimonies that come out of it. That would be my answer. Right. All right?

Thanks. But you did say the ending was you don't think it was the real ending? No, not the original ending. No, it's definitely, there's a clear, either it ends in verse 8, okay, which would be very odd, but one of the top Marx scholars in the world now that I was talking to believes it ends, so here, this would be the last verse.

And they, the women, went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seen them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. And that would be an odd way to end it. One of my friends, Dr. Craig Keener, who's working on a massive Mark commentary now, thinks that's the original ending, and it's for you to say, well, we have to go tell the message.

Now we have to go tell everyone that he rose. Otherwise, you have a shorter ending that's been preserved and the longer ending. The longer ending is in what's in our Bibles, verses 9 to 20. The reason we say it's not the original ending is there's an immediate change in subjects about who's being spoken about, and then different vocabulary is used in the Greek as opposed to the rest of Mark.

So it's clearly not the original, but my understanding is that it did include authoritative words of Jesus, that for some reason in God's providence, we didn't have the original ending, now we have this, or Mark ended it like this and then someone felt it needed a supplement, but it does contain the actual words of Jesus. We just have to find them elsewhere in Scripture to say this is absolute doctrine, which we can certainly do for tongues, for healing, for driving out demons, authority over Satan, and then God preserving us through every attack and blessing our food and drink and things like that. But for sure, and you know this, you understand this, you're a common sense guy from New York, we don't go out and drink poison or pick up venomous snakes just to prove our faith.

Hey, thanks as always for the discussion. This must be some Bible study you're part of, man. The good thing is you're all still together.

That's the nice thing. You're all still friends, you're all still together. All right, 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Tyler in Tampa, Florida.

Thanks so much for holding. Welcome to the line of fire. Hey, Dr. Brown. Hey, I had a question about Deuteronomy 32 and the Deuteronomy 32 worldview that is popularized by Dr. Michael Heizer. I'm sure you're familiar with his work, basically that the Lord, after the Tower of Babel, devised the nations to different Elohim in that he says you're going to be placeholders, and then they turn evil, create wickedness in men, and that he keeps Israel for his inheritance. Dr. Heizer backed this up with Daniel 9 and other things, Ephesians 6. I was just wondering how you viewed that, and then in particular, I know in charismatic churches we can sometimes do regional warfare. Your view on that, like if there is spiritual, territorial, spiritual powers over regions, if it's accessible, legal, whatever, to do warfare over those things, and just your view on that. Right, so Dr. Heizer is a friend and colleague and a brilliant scholar, and I deeply appreciate his work. I don't necessarily see everything the same way.

It's not that it couldn't be, but what I would do, and he would certainly agree with this, is you go from the certain to the uncertain. So the reading of Deuteronomy 32, you've got to portion things according to the sons of Israel or the sons of El, sons of God, meaning the divine beings, the angelic beings that are over nations. To me, it's debatable. I know the various textual issues, Dead Sea Scrolls, Septuagint versus Mesopotamian manuscripts, et cetera. In my reading, I just passed there a couple days ago and thought afresh about it.

But let's just put a question mark next to that, okay? All right, and let's go to Ephesians 6-12, which says that our struggle is not with flesh and blood, but with principalities, powers. And so principalities and powers, you're not just talking about individual demons. And I would certainly say, based on Daniel 10, where you have the warfare, the prince of Persia and things like that, which would be totally part of Dr. Heizer's understanding, right, that there are demonic powers or angelic powers, however we want to translate that or understand it, over regions. There's no question when you go and minister around the world that you can go to places where the Holy Spirit's being poured out and you feel like heaven's open and you go somewhere else and you preach the exact same message and your words barely get out of your mouth before they hit the ground.

That's how it feels. We have friends that are grads of our school, colleagues that are missionaries in countries like Thailand, and they have been praying and fasting for years and years and there have been generations of people praying and fasting and still the gospel spreading very gradually there. Or the explosion of the gospel in China and South Korea and then North Korea before it closed, God knows what's happening there. But Japan still, even people that successfully planted megachurches in different parts of the world, in other words, they took what they were doing, brought it to other parts of the world, and then did the exact same thing with Japan, it didn't work there.

You know, other parts of the world where, you know, they're called missionaries' graveyards. So there are definitely spiritual principalities and powers. The late John Paul Jackson urged, urged people not to try to do battle with principalities and that we drive out demons, that's an individual, that's our one-on-one ministry or ministering to a congregation or group of people. By all means, we address our prayer to God and cry out to God to move and work and proclaim the authority of the gospel to advance the message, the authority of the gospel. All authority in heaven and earth is given to Jesus.

In that sense, heaven is open because he's risen. And to me, as an individual, I do not feel that we would have the authority to tackle a principality. However, if the leaders of a region came together in prayer and fasting before the Lord in repentance and getting right, by all means, they could do that. And I know of that being done in the city of Richmond in the 80s where all the pastors were brought together by a key intercessor. They said the number one stronghold in our city right now is violence and murder. One a day, which put them at the highest rate per capita in the city.

They prayed and fasted for weeks in the mornings and nobody was killed for almost a month. And the mayor said, whoever's doing something, keep it up. Something was going on.

So that to me would be an example. Regional, fight regionally. 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 866-342.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on the Line of Fire. Hey, simple principle. If you're praying for a national revival, one individual praying for it's not going to happen. It's well, if you're one person living in a country of three people, it might happen. But God is looking for a national response.

God is looking for a national cry. That's just how things how things work. So your prayers make a difference.

But look, if one person you just. OK, Lord, I ask you for peace on Earth now in Jesus name. Amen. It just doesn't happen like Lord. Come soon.

Come now. Amen. There's a cumulative prayer and the force of cumulative prayer. But every prayer makes a difference, like chopping down that tree.

Every blow of the axe makes a difference. And then with our individual ministry outreach, absolutely life and death. All right. Back to the phones.

Let's go to Anthony in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Yes, sir.

So my question has to do with moral government theology and some of the implications that it has. Let me give you context on why I'm asking. So I do I do college ministry at one of the universities here in Lake Charles.

And a resource that I've been using pretty ongoing that I have found effective is a winky crack. He's a flame. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with him.

Sure. He's an old friend. And so, however, I know that he was really influenced by Charles Finney. And Charles Finney, I guess, is the label that's been put on him is moral government theology. And which appears to be, you know, a little little pledge in. So my question, I guess, like, what are your thoughts on some of the implications that even like you would find in the flame?

I mean, I'm using it. Students are actually like. Like have a growing hunger for God and for holiness. And I can't deny that. But like, for instance, like one of the implications of this is that like Winky Bratney thinks that like you you don't have to sin. If you're actually like you can actually be so in love with Jesus that like you don't have to sin. You can you can live. Right. You can live a life that doesn't have to intentionally sin. Right. So.

Right. Number one, I don't I don't see that as flowing necessarily out of different atonement theologies. So the moral government that would be more or less that that Jesus takes the representative punishment as opposed to penal substitutionary atonement or simply substitutionary atonement where he dies in our place. Finney, I think, came at things in a logical way and recognized, OK, Jesus did not take on all of our physical sicknesses. He did not he did not go to hell forever, et cetera. In other words, it was the representative punishment of death that he suffered by which God forgives us.

I see that as part of it, but not all of it, because it is it is substitution on a deep level. But when I see Finney preaching, Finney's point is that we are born naturally fallen and we inevitably sin as fallen as fallen human beings. In other words, Winky Pratney might say you're born with two strikes against you and you will guaranteed strike out. That's why you need a redeemer and reformed.

And others would say most would say, no, you're born struck out already. So Finney would say it's an inevitability of your nature that you will sin and rebel against God. That's why his repentance preaching is so intense. You know, you don't find you don't find a Calvinist preaching repentance any deeper than Finney and turning from sin.

I don't find it Pelagian when he says, Ezekiel, God says through Ezekiel, Ezekiel 18, get yourselves a new heart. So you have to do that. But you can only do that by the power of the spirit. Now, to me, the key thing is this if just to be practical rather than to to fully engage Winky or Charles Finney. The key is that you do not want the kids to have a false expectation as if they could actually be sin free for good.

Right. Right at this moment, I hope and trust that I'm not sitting in any way in all of my consciousness at this moment. As I'm speaking to you, I'm speaking with a pure heart to honor the Lord, to bless you, to help listeners, etc. But the idea that I could perpetually be sin free in this body in this world is contradicted by my experience of 50 years as a believer and by scripture to me.

So I it would be you don't want them to have any sense. And by the way, when when Wesley talked about perfectionism or Finney, I don't my understanding was they weren't saying that you can reach complete and total moral sin free perfection. Otherwise, Finney would not have emphasized revival as much as he would, you know, recognizing the backslidden state of much of the church. So what I would want these young people to be is grounded in the love of the Father, that when we would teach at Fire School of Ministry, because people were so passionate about the calling of God and we were so putting a vision in front of them, of God using you, using your life to to help a dying and hurting world give your life for the gospel, that we realize that many students got a performance mentality. They had to work harder. They had to pray more.

They weren't doing enough. So we intentionally shifted our emphasis while still making a very radical call. Our school model was by life or by death, you know, for the gospel. But the very first semester or trimester, we really emphasize grounding them in the love of the Father, security in the Father, knowing they're accepted because of what Jesus did, not because of their best works or best day, and that on their very best day, they'll still fall short.

But because they are loved by God and because sin is so ugly and destructive with all their being, they want to please him. So that's the key thing, Anthony, that I would encourage you to to guard the students against, which is any sense of performance, legalism, let it be grounded in the love of God. And of course, you know, Winky is a great youth minister all these decades. He understands that the love of the Father and putting that in the young people.

That's what I would emphasize. And in that regard, I'm having students in a new school where I'm ministering to students and teaching in Fort Worth on a monthly basis. I'm having them read in the first semester my book, How Saved Are We?, which is a radical wake them up, shake them up book. But first, they have to read my son in law Ryan's book, Living Loved. So I'd encourage you to drink that into Living Loved by Ryan Bruss, especially with young people, the performance thing, the fatherless thing is a real epidemic.

Let them be grounded in the love of the Father, out of which with all my being God, I want to be holy and please you. Hey, hopefully that is helpful. And again, the name of the book, Ryan Bruss, B-R-U-S-S, Living Loved. All right, let's go to Amanda in Clarkston, Michigan. Thanks for calling the line of fire.

Time's short, so dive right in, please. Yes, thank you for taking my call. I have purchased your volumes on the Jewish Objections, but I haven't been through everything yet. So I don't know if this is addressed there or if you could recommend where I could find more on this topic. But earlier you mentioned about partial versus dual fulfillment.

Yes. And I was wondering, are there any examples of partial and or dual fulfillments within the Hebrew Scriptures specifically that happen again within the Hebrew Scriptures? Okay, for sure we see things that have not fully happened yet within the Hebrew Scriptures. In other words, I mentioned Ezekiel 36.

So this is a very important passage. The context is the exiles in Babylon, right? Coming out of Babylon, coming back to the land of Israel, being reestablished by God. Jeremiah has similar prophecies and the temple will be rebuilt. That's in Jeremiah. The temple will be rebuilt and X, Y, Z things will happen. Well, only X happened.

Y and Z never happened. But when you read it, when you read Ezekiel 36 and then Ezekiel 37, the dry bones, which the context, the historical context is the Jewish people coming out of Babylonian exile, right? That that with with this understanding there there is a when you read the text, if you were a Jewish person reading or Jeremiah 24, the return of the Jewish people from exile in Babylon, Jeremiah says you're going to go into exile. Ezekiel already is in exile and you're going to return. What you would have expected was when they came back, the messianic era was going to break.

They're going to come back. They're going to rebuild the temple. The glory of the Lord will be so strong. Israel will turn to God with one heart and one soul and follow him. Jerusalem will never be destroyed again. And the nations of the world will now come to Jerusalem because of what he's done.

That would have been your expectation. Did they return from exile? Yes.

Was the temple rebuilt? Yes. Did the rest of the prophecies happen?

No. So that's right. Those are some of the most major prophecies in the Hebrew Bible. So when I wrote my Jeremiah commentary, that was a big light going on for me that this is not just messianic prophecy that has a partial fulfillment. So God promises one through 10. But in the context, it feels like it's all going to happen there. But only one through three or one through four happened then. But it's in the Bible.

So what do you do? Were they false prophets? No, because the first part came to pass. So that makes you understand the rest will also come to pass. So we talk about dual fulfillment. I think it's better to think of lineal fulfillment.

Partial initially happens and then the rest happens later. So the most major prophecies that are spoken of the most frequently in the Hebrew Bible, the return of the Jewish people from Babylonian exile, the restoration of the exiles from northern Israel, all of those prophecies, the biggest parts of them has still not been fulfilled, even though they were historical context. Another example would be Jeremiah 30 through 33. And even when it says you'd be restored, Jerusalem rebuilt and Jerusalem will never be destroyed again. But it was. It was.

Well, then that means that there is still this time to come when it will never be destroyed. Hey, friends, remember the website. Now ask Dr. Brown. Last day to preorder special sign numbered hardcover edition of Revival or we die. It's a book you want to get. Another program powered by the Truth Network.