Do Biblical Words Have Hidden Numeric Meanings?

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So what about Gomatria? Finding numerical values for the Hebrew letters in the Bible. Is that a valid way of reading the scripture? It's time for the Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the Line of Fire. And now here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. We are going to dive into another controversy today here on the Line of Fire, and the phone lines are open wide. 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-348-7884.

Michael Brown, delighted to be with you, thrilled to be back in our home studio. Anything you want to ask me about the Bible or biblical languages or biblical translations today, phone lines are open 866-348-7884. But in particular, we're going to focus on a number of controversial methods of interpreting scripture.

Before we get into that, a couple things. One week ago today, I did a broadcast on revisiting the Passion translation, which emphasizes a paraphrase, not a translation, and have had dialogue with Brian Simmons, the translator behind that, behind the Passion version. I had dialogue with him subsequent to the show.

He did take time to watch it. I always appreciate his humility and desire to honor the Lord, and he's taking suggestions that I've given very, very seriously. There are major revisions being made, a lot of scholarly input they're going to get as much as they can. So that to me is very positive, and let's see what comes out of it. But there were folks who criticized me and said, Dr. Brown, he said, Dr. Brown, you didn't adequately take into account many of the claims that he's made about God downloading information or giving him special revelation or insights into Hebrew and Greek and things like that. And then Pastor Mike Winger, who's done so much research on this, reached out to me as well and said, really, it's important to listen to all of his comments.

So here's the deal. I was focusing on the data. I was focusing on, here's what's written, and here's what he said, here's the Hebrew, here's the Greek. I was focusing on that. That's what I was evaluating.

That's what I've evaluated up to now. However, I absolutely recognize the validity of that challenge to say, okay, if someone says, and I'm not saying Brian said this or not, but hypothetically, if someone says, the Lord told me this was the meaning of this verse, and now I show you lexically, philologically, exegetically, that's not the meaning of the verse, then that would mean the Lord didn't show you, right? I'm not saying Brian made that specific claim about specific verses. I'm just making that point. So that's totally valid. I agree.

Here's the good news. I don't know when, but Brian in the future would like to come on my show, and in his words, nothing will be off limits. So if we talk about his background, the Amazon River, was he really a Bible translator? Did he claim that God showed God showed him other books of the Bible?

Did he claim to have special help from an angel? We'll sort that out, and I've told Mike I will absolutely do my best to listen to the relevant video quotes to have that, and you'll be able to call. I have no idea. It could be a year from now. It could be six months from now. I don't know when, but totally valid. I agree with that. Absolutely agree. All right. One, I think it was a critical comment, but I did actually look through some of the comments. Someone had said best part of the show was when I was looking for a footnote in the translation in Luke 11, and I kind of like, where, what, what?

Yeah, that was real time, exactly what was happening. Just, okay, don't get the justification for that. In any case, in any case, we will look at these issues, because we're talking about handling the precious Word of God. So what about gematria? This is a Hebrew word. This is a Jewish method of interpretation, or plays on words, or finding hidden meanings, or simply making homiletical points, and it's based on each letter having a numerical value. Now, I don't know exactly how far back in history it goes that the letters also function as numbers.

You know, that's not the case in English, right? We have the alphabet, then we have the numerical system. But in different languages, especially in the ancient world, the letters were the system you had. So in that case, A would be 1, B would be 2, C would be 3, etc. So for Hebrew, alef beit gimel dalet hevav zayin, all the way up to the end of the alphabet, each one represents a number. So you go right up to 100, which is koph, and then the next one, reish, is 200, shen, 300, tof, 400. And then you add them up accordingly. And then the same with Greek, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, etc. That goes a little differently. So again, alpha 1, beta 2, and then rho would be 100, sigma 200, tau 300, and this goes up to omega with 800, and also skips 90.

So you say, well, how would it actually work? So to this day in Hebrew, this is the numbers are used as letters. Excuse me, the letters are used as numbers. The question was, and this is what's raised with Gomatria, are those meanings, each letter having a numerical value, are those meanings found in the Hebrew Bible? So can you say, okay, here's the hidden meaning.

I'll give you an example. Let's just say the word for truth added up to, well, we don't have to say, let's just say alef is what? Alef is one, tof the last letter we just covered, tof is 400.

And let's say you don't know, you just look, I pull up a website, Hebrew, Greek, alphabet, numerical values, just to see how accessible it is, totally accessible. So you look at that. So alef one, mem 40, and then tof 400. So 441. Let's say you find another word or a sentence where you add up everything in the sentence and it comes to 441. Ah, that's all about truth. In other words, that's how the game would work.

The fact is, it is a game. The fact is you can make anything equal anything because there's so many ways to do it. You could take a few short words or words where the letters are of lower numerical value, add those up together, and get a larger word or word of higher numerical value. You could take a sentence, you could take a phrase, you could take any number of words, and anything could equal anything.

There is zero evidence that the Bible was meant to be interpreted like that. And plus, over the centuries, spelling conventions changed. So just like when I was growing up, you spelled judgment, j-u-d-g-e-m-e-n-t, and then the e dropped.

If you're spelling in British English, you spell color, c-o-l-o-u-r. We dropped the u a while ago in American English. For years, if I wrote the word worshiping, there'd be two p's. Now my spell corrector corrects it to one p, which to me looks like worshiping instead of worshipping. But anyway, spelling conventions changed. We have that in the Hebrew Bible as well.

So when things were first written to the final manuscripts that we have, that were then copied and passed on, spelling has changed. So this was not about the specific spelling to communicate a certain numerical value because every letter stood for a number. No.

What happens when you do that is the sky is the limit. Can I illustrate this for you? Okay, here we go. I said, okay, let's look at Yeshua. So Yeshua, when you add up everything involved, you end up with 386. 386 is what you end up with for numerical value of Yeshua. You have 10, then you have 300, then you have 80, or you have 6, then you have 80.

Okay? 386. So I went to this website, which I am not recommending, I am not recommending the website, gamatrix, with an x at the end,.org, and I typed in 386 value, right, Yeshua, and let's see what else comes up.

So they have this strange thing that they computed. They claim in Jewish Gomatria, Lord Satan equals 386, all right? So here's what's on their list, and now they've gotten it broken up here, L-O-R-D-S-A-T-A-N, this is not Jewish Gomatria, this is some other system, but this is just to illustrate the point.

This is not actually using Hebrew, but it's just to illustrate the point. So let's look at the list here of what comes up. So this is Lord Satan and Gomatria, according to this website.

Here are the other names that come up, or words. London Dragon, Blackout, these all have the numerical value of 386 based on their system here, okay? April Fools, I Am of Christ, Pepe the Frog, Ketchup, 939, Pattern, The Mother, States, Made of Christ, Equals, Last Pope, I Am the Messiah, Perfume, Opaque, either Refuse or Refuse, King of the Gods, 399, Tarshish, Accursed, Solomon Cain, F.R.X., Horseshoe, Stretch, Fritz Kroc, Blood Moons, Redeem the Time, September 1st, The Grail Kings, Semiotics, Bitumen, Ben Simmons, Horseshoe, Please Take Care, Hungarian, Moises Ocho, Moon Became Like Blood, Rubies, Satanic Images, Eugenism, Fert, B.C. License Plate 5313KT, Peace at Last, U.R.R.A.L, Smile Satan, and Route R.A.U.T.E.

Oh, okay, you get the point. Whatever system they used to come up with numerical value 386 for these letters, you can come up with anything. So if you're sharp enough with Hebrew and the ancient rabbis that used this, they were just like computers in their brains coming up with numerical values of the words, right? So anything can mean anything. I've seen attacks on Jesus because it means false messiah in Hebrew, it means this or it means that or it's numerical value.

So the sky's the limit. You say, yeah, but is it there? You know, in the New Testament, the number of the beast is the number of man, and that's 666, and maybe 666 is the numerical value of Kaiser in Greek. Yeah, there could be one time in the Bible where the biblical author has that play on words, in which case either Caesar is the beast or is the type of the beast. And you could argue that when Matthew divides his genealogy into three groups of 14, one where you repeat one name to get that, but three groups of 14, that it could be going back to David, Dalet, Vav, Dalet in Hebrew, 4 plus 6 plus 4 equals 14. He's not explicit with that, but possibly. What that tells you is that maybe, possibly, you have two times in the whole Bible where maybe, possibly, an author under divine inspiration makes this point. That, to me, is telling me, don't mess with it the rest of the time. This is absolutely not valid. Gomatria is not a valid way of doing biblical interpretation.

It's basically an open door for you to come up with anything equals anything, as our little list just demonstrated. All right, you have questions? 866-34-TRUTH. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Do you have questions on any aspect of Bible translation? Tuesdays and recent weeks, we've made a Theology Tuesday, call this a Text Tuesday, digging deeper into biblical texts and biblical subjects. Do you have a question about pictograph, the Hebrew letters that were originally pictographs of their secret pictographic meanings, or just a general Bible question? We'll take some calls as well today.

866-34-TRUTH. You know what's really interesting? I don't get to look at a lot of comments, but I do see some of the comments that come into our shows, and we welcome as much feedback as we can get.

Our whole team does. But I find it really interesting. Some folks will say, Dr. Brown, this is your lane. Stay in this lane, just teaching Bible and theology and Bible controversies. Don't get involved in politics and culture, man.

Please just stay with this. And then we'll get flooded with other people saying, Dr. Brown, thank God you're addressing issues of the culture and politics. If you're not going to do it, who's going to do it? And so few pastors and Christian leaders do it. It's essential that you do it. And then we get a whole bunch of other people saying, Mike, it's so good that you're dealing with Jewish objections and apologetics. That's what you need to do, and please produce more resources for us.

So we do all of them by the calling of the Lord and in obedience to the Lord. And some are going to resonate more with one show or article than another. Great. Resonate with that. Share those with others. And please take advantage of all the resources we have. You know, many folks who appreciate our Jewish apologetics works have never read my five-volume series on answering Jewish objections to Jesus. That's where everything starts. Or never watched our 22-hour video series on Countering Missionaries.

So we've got a ton of resources already out for you. Not Ashamed of Jesus Day is coming in two days. Today's the 12th if you're listening live. April 14th.

If you haven't gone to the website yet, please go there. Notashamedofjesus.org. It is a national holiday that we are proclaiming, saying we're here. We're not ashamed. We love Jesus.

We love you. It's a day when we wear something that draws attention to our faith or bring something, a Bible or something to work or school or look for an opportunity to share the gospel or offer to pray with someone or post something all the more clear on social media. Let it resonate. Let it encourage.

Let it grow with more and more people saying, hey, I'm one of those too. Let it be known that we're not ashamed. Let it be known that we won't be silenced or muzzled.

Notashamedofjesus.org. And then on that day, we're going to encourage you to post some things live on the spot as you're getting the message out. But make sure you spread the word. I appreciate all the pastors, leaders, all of our friends, believers on social media spreading the word. Let's make a difference every day. But let this be a day of proclamation. Okay.

The other day, I reposted this on Facebook two days ago. It was my video about telling the truth about the Paleo Hebrew script. This is, Paleo Hebrew is not a language. Paleo Hebrew is not a form of the Hebrew language. It's a form of the Hebrew script. It is, it is the older script that would have been used that looked very much like the Phoenician script with the script of the Moabite inscription or the Gezer inscription. These, these ancient Canaanite writings. And then after the exile, Hebrew shifted borrowing an Aramaic script, which is what you see in the Hebrew Bible, just generally on a website with, with Hebrew, just the square shaped, the block letters, we say square shaped block letters. And then when you're doing certain study, you might reconstruct the Paleo Hebrew would have looked like this, but I posted this. Did you know that it's a complete and utter myth that the biblical Hebrew letters carry hidden pictographic meanings that give us deeper insights into the text?

Myth repeated there. Did you know that Paleo Hebrew does not refer to some kind of ancient Hebrew dialect, but simply refers to the ancient Hebrew script? People say, well, Dr. Brown, you have to study it in the Paleo Hebrew. That's not a language. That's script.

Just means it was written differently. Okay. So I say, watch this in depth video for more, and please don't get mad at me telling you the truth. We've got well over a thousand comments to that video on YouTube and some got so nasty.

We just had to block people. I mean, nasty. I mean, nourishing their teeth because I just told them the truth. No, the moon is not made of cheese. Don't get mad at me for telling the truth.

You know, Paul asked that of the Galatians, have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? You say, well, I don't get it. Weren't the original letters pictographs?

Yeah, and there would have been thousands of them. Right? So you have a foot or a leg, a picture of that. That could mean walking or that could mean foot or that could mean leg.

That could be the word associated with foot or leg or some of those sounds, et cetera. So you needed thousands of pictographs the ancient hieroglyphs. You had this or the Sumerian pictographs. You didn't need thousands of signs that are the earliest Chinese alphabets as those developed. Those are, you know, it's been condensed and shortened, but otherwise thousands of signs because the signs convey so many different things.

Eventually it became reduced in Hebrew to 22 letters and an alphabet. And the idea that the pictographic meaning is still in here is completely impossible. Why? Because you cannot convey meaning with 22 pictures. You're going to have every kind of possible option as to what you actually mean in trying to convey that. Anyone's going to read anything into it. There's no way you could communicate with any clarity. You say, no, no, but the hidden meanings are still very interesting. There is no hidden meaning.

And we know this for a fact because nowhere does the Bible allude to any such thing. In the ancient world, no one is alluding back to pictographs in these alphabets. And as the alphabet changed, the letters no longer resembled the pictures at all.

At all. So originally the pictograph from which we get the letter Beit from Beit house looked like an enclosure of some kind. As it's written more and more over the years, it doesn't look like an enclosure at all.

Why? Because it doesn't mean enclosure, it just means Be. So you took the first sound of the word, right? So Be, Beit.

Okay? De, Dalet for the word for a door. But as it's written and passed on, it just means De.

That's all. It doesn't mean door. It just means De. And our English alphabet, as I pointed out, comes from the same Phoenician alphabet and our, our, here, that's why Aleph, Beit, Gimel, Dalet in Hebrew, in English, A, B, C, D, and in Greek, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, because they all come, the Greek alphabet comes from that. Our alphabet comes from the Greek alphabet ultimately going back to there, which goes back to Phoenician.

But there are no pictographs in English. Now, so some people asked with sincerity. They, they heard something that interested them and they asked with sincerity. So here, one gentleman posted this comment, Jeff. He said, so words like Shalom don't mean destroy the authority attached to chaos. And I said, exactly. It's complete nonsense. It's bogus.

It's a myth. I had easily demonstrated, but let's, let's go right to the site that Jeff looked at. So again, if you're, if you know Hebrew and Greek and you read these, you understand the language, you know the pictographs have no meaning here. Okay? There is not a respected Hebrew scholar on the planet that would ever argue that within the biblical text, we should actually look for hidden pictographic meanings.

Okay? We just know any more than we should look for it in English. So here's, so I clicked on the page and I go there and it says Peace Shalom. Well, first it's mispronounced.

It would have been a long a sha shalom, not shalom, but let's, let's put that aside. And it says the shen represents two front teeth and can mean sharp, eat, consume, separate or destroy. Oh, hang on. Where'd you get that from? Okay, let's say that it comes from word for teeth and originally looks like teeth. Okay.

Let's just say that. And then the word for teeth beginning with sha, so it's just sha. That all, so all it is, is sha. But who told you it can mean sharp or eat or consume or separate or destroy. Where'd you get that from?

Who told you? Where in ancient Hebrew lexicons does it tell you this? Where in ancient sources does it tell you this?

Where does the Bible tell you? It's imagined. It's made up. It's simply made up.

Okay. The laman is a picture of her shepherd's staff. The shepherd used the staff text as authority over the sheep to directly lead them. It can mean teach, lead, yoke, move forward or authority. Who, who said that? Who said it could stand for teach? We're just trying to figure this out. The vav represents a ten peg or nail. It means to secure or hook, but it could also mean peg or nail. Well, why not come up with more meanings for it?

The sky's the limit here. I assure you the meanings for shen are imagined meanings, some of them. The mem as the nomadic people, the Hebrews did not understand the waves or waters of the oceans, so the letter came to mean chaos, mighty or blood. Who, who told you this? Where's this information coming from? This is myth. This is made up.

It's absolutely made up. So now, you ready for this? So together, so now we have the shen, right? Shabbat shalom. So peaceful Sabbath, good Sabbath. Together the words signify to separate to the house of the covenant where the authority that establishes chaos has been destroyed and rest in the Lord in peace. You might as well say it means the cow jumped over the moon and had a hallucination that it was Elvis Presley and returned to earth in a UFO and ran for president, incarnated as Donald Trump.

You, you could read any, you could make this mean anything. Oh, the Lord gave me. That's not insight from the Lord. That's bogus.

That's making things up. And by the way, if the whole thing was shalom and well, you know, the vav is in there and it represents, you know, a certain thing and securing and well, the root is shalom. That's the root from whence it comes. The vav is not there. And that root has to do with peace or wholeness.

So you don't need the vav for that. And then you come up with other forms of the word, verbal forms where you're adding and taking away letters. That doesn't change the meaning. It just changes the aspects of it, et cetera. Or I did this or you did this or you did something related to your peace or your welfare. When you add the pictographic meanings, it makes nonsense out of things.

It is complete myth. And yet when I tell that to some people, some get offended, some get angry, some call me a heretic. Friends, what are we doing? Isn't the Bible enough?

Why do we need the myths? Phone lines are open. If you have a Bible-related question, theology-related question, translation-related question of any kind, 866-348-7884 is the number to call.

Open up the phone lines like we do on Friday. So if you've got questions, we've got answers. We've been debunking some myths when it comes to understanding the scriptures and people looking for a hidden meaning in the Hebrew or the Greek. I'm all for digging into the text. My doctoral dissertation focused on one Hebrew word as it worked through the Hebrew Bible and the concept in the ancient Near East.

I've written detailed academic articles on single Hebrew words. I've dug as deep as I know how to dig in multiple lexicons and multiple languages and multiple commentaries and above all, on my knees, on my face, asking God to open up his word to me. And I prayed the prayer from Psalm 119. Many a time, Open, uncover my eyes that I may behold wonders from your teaching, from your Torah.

So may the Lord open our eyes and open our heart and open our mind. But it's not going to be to something beyond what is written. Oh, I mean, the Holy Spirit may speak to you about something in your life that's not related to a text in the Bible. Of course, the Holy Spirit continues to speak, but then he's not going to reveal a meaning to you in the Bible, that when God said lo teen off, don't commit adultery, what that actually meant was don't commit spiritual adultery, but by all means, sleep with your neighbor's wife.

No, no, it's never going to be that. And it's not going to be adding to the scripture. So, for example, in John 11, where it said Jesus wept. Well, if you could really understand it in the Greek, what it would actually mean is that Jesus began to sob uncontrollably.

Then he began to fall to the ground. As he fell to the ground, the sobbing was so intense that it created a river, and that river then began to flow out into the cemeteries, and that river of life then of his tears began to bring other people back from the dead. No, no, it means he wept. Now, the Greek may speak of it in a more vivid way, and it may be more concise or something. You know, Greek has multiple different ways of referring to love. Hebrew has love and like expressed by one word.

Right? So you have other aspects of things, but each language expresses itself differently. It is a myth to think that Hebrew and Greek contain mystical meanings, which can only be uncovered by understanding the numerical letters, the value of the letters, or the alleged pictographic values of the letters. That is myth, and it's telling me that what God's saying in this word is not sufficient.

By the way, every time the Bible quotes the Bible, every time Jesus or the apostles quote the Bible, they're quoting the Bible for what it says. They're not quoting it for a hidden numerical meaning. They're not quoting it for a hidden pictographic meaning. They're not quoting it for any of those reasons. Why?

Because those meanings do not exist, and those meanings are an example of the sky is the limit. Go through the video. I mean, we took time to put that together with lots of illustrations.

It was a bit painstaking to do, but we did it to be valuable to you. So if you just go to my website, AskDrBrown.org, and just search for pictograph, pictograph, it'll get you to that video. Watch it through. And again, there's no ambiguity about this.

Dr. Michael Heiser appreciated the video and immediately posted something, you know, confirming this. And you say, well, that's your problem. You're looking at this all heart and no mind. Excuse me, all mind and no heart. Just excuse me, all heart, no mind. All right. So that's your problem, Brown. You're just, it's just all head to you.

There's no heart. Well, you don't know me. You don't know me at all. You don't know my relationship with God. You don't know the hours I spend basking in His presence, pouring out my heart to Him and just telling how much I love Him and enjoy Him and adore Him and love the moving of the Spirit and love when the Holy Spirit speaks to us. I embrace that 24-7.

So be it. I love God with all my heart and all my mind. But you don't turn your brain off when you read the Bible. I mean, why even have words? Why not just hold the Bible to your chest and go, hmm, speak to me, Lord, speak?

No, you open it and read it. You want God to speak to you through the Bible? Don't put the Bible under your pillow at night and sleep like that. Oh, Lord, speak to me.

No, no. Before you go to sleep, open the Bible and read it and then say, God, open my eyes to understand. And most of the time, most of the time it's not primarily that we don't get what the words mean. Sometimes that's the case and verses that are disputed and difficult to translate, that can be the case. But most of the time it's getting it in our hearts so we can live it.

It's getting it in mind and heart so we understand and we obey that we get it and we take hold of it. OK, so check out this interchange on Facebook. This was in response to my post about the pictographic meanings, right? That they do not exist in the Hebrew text.

So a woman named Ann posts this in response. You don't know the language. I mean, it is kind of funny.

It's like saying I don't have a nose on my face, I don't have a mustache. But OK, you don't know the language. But I thought maybe, by the way, I normally don't get to interact with comments, but this post I decided to. I was going to interact as I had opportunity.

Still limited time, but as I had opportunity. So I responded with, you're joking, correct? She responds, no, I've seen silly things you claim, you've written claiming that kaneh bosam is not cannabis, balsam. And that alone disqualifies you from claiming mastery of the language. In other words, may the Lord help this woman.

May the Lord help her to embrace truth. The fact that I tell the truth. The fact that Hebrew lexicons, without exception.

The people that work for decades studying the language and classifying things and putting words on the dictionary, writers, right? Scholars from all backgrounds, Jewish, Christian, that they will tell you the same thing. This has nothing to do with marijuana. This has nothing to do with cannabis. The fact that I say it now disqualifies me from being taken seriously. OK, so I decided, let's let's have a little fun here. So I posted back extraordinary.

Wow, wow, wow. Of course, the Hebrew is not cannabis. But tell you what, since my Ph.D. is in New Eastern languages and literature and I've written numerous scholarly articles on aspects of the Hebrew languages.

Please find me a recognized Hebrew scholar who accepts your claims. And thanks for making my night. And really was like, you've got to be kidding me. So this is her response.

Are you ready? There's a difference between regurgitating facts and understanding essence. So the fact that the words don't mean something is meaningless because you've got to get the essence, got to get the essence.

Hebrew letters are alive. They are their own meanings. And then these meanings are multifaceted.

In other words, the sky's the limit. I might as well say I'm not I'm not going to regurgitate the facts of what she wrote. I'm going to understand the essence and the essence of what she wrote is, Dr. Brown, I think you're an amazing person. And I'm so glad that you're speaking the truth about these cloudy issues and helping us that are led astray. I could make her say whatever I want. Or I could read between the lines and say, Dr. Brown, I judge you to be an idiot because I love pot and I want to use the Bible to justify me.

Do whatever you want with it. But once you say that words no longer have meaning, that you have that the words are alive. So the Hebrew Hebrew letters, they're alive because they're alive. They can change. They can morph. Right. So it'd be like, you know, I write out, hello, nice to see you on a piece of paper.

And then it turns around and says, get out of my house. I hate you. Words are alive. I mean, we've got to expose this nonsense. The fact that when I address these things, we get such a flood of comments, this bizarre, this out there. And then from sincere believers who are seeking and wanting the truth, say, hey, I just want to understand the truth.

You know, Dr. Brown, be patient. I'm just trying to understand the truth. I'm trying to give it what you have to understand is that even the discussion of it shouldn't be had. I know you may have been misled. Now we're trying to rightly lead you.

But there's nothing to debate. I am breathing air right now. I am not breathing Coca-Cola. I'm sitting in a chair. I'm not flying in an airplane. That's what we're talking about.

Non-debatable issues when it comes to these things. So she continues. Have you ever studied the Zohar? Did you realize that Adam and Eve, whose creation was described in Bereshit, chapter two, were cannabis plants, right? Oh, God help this woman.

She posted publicly, so I'm going to talk about it publicly. So did you get that? Yes, I've studied the Zohar, by the way. So Adam and Eve, this, I don't know the language.

See, this is the problem. I'm ignorant of the real meaning of the language. Adam and Eve were not actually people described in the book of Genesis, chapter two. But they were actually cannabis plants. How do you, how do you have a discussion with someone who believes this when anything can mean anything?

How do you have a discussion? And might, might I posit a guess here? Might I go out on a limb here?

Sarcasm alert. Might I posit a guess that perhaps the smoking of cannabis contributed to some of these interpretations? I got some amazing insights when I was high in LSD. In fact, can I, guys, can I share this?

I don't know. Once, while high on hallucinogenic drugs and huffing diesel gas, before I was, yes, before I was saved, about 16 years old, I discovered the secret of the universe and the secret of all movement in the universe. Yeah, I discovered that. Smoke enough stuff, put enough stuff in your system, you'll discover all kinds of things.

The Bible says, be sober, be sober. She says, and are you deliberately disseminating misinformation? I confess, I'm deliberately disseminating the misinformation that Adam and Eve were human beings, not cannabis plants.

I am deliberately doing it. The Hebrew keneh bosom says hemp bosom. False, false, it does not. Which we call hashish. You know this if you know Hebrew.

I know it does not say that because I know Hebrew. But you chose to reveal your deceptive intent by claiming a parallel factoid like Snopes does. Do you have enough sense of shame to stop now? So I just post it, may the Lord be merciful to you and awaken your heart to truth, not fantasy, and then just remove the comments. Because that type of stuff is just not appropriate on our page.

But we did take screenshots first. You say, ah, it's just one person. First, Jesus died for everyone, meaning for one person and for everybody. It bothers me, it grieves me when one person is deceived. But that spirit of not accepting the facts and, oh, some deeper revelation. Ooh, that's prevalent in the body today, especially in my charismatic circles.

Wake up, friends. This stuff is dangerous. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on The Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to The Line of Fire. Don't forget to visit notashamedofjesus.org. We've only got two days until National Not Ashamed of Jesus Day, our first ever on April 14th. So make sure you go to notashamedofjesus.org. All right, to the phones. Let's go to Isaac in Westville, Oklahoma. Welcome to The Line of Fire.

Doing very well, thank you. I was duked into Mormonism for 16 years because of my own ignorance. I didn't read the Bible. And before I got saved, I thought Jesus was made up by the Catholics. And as I continue on this journey, I was more first like a Southern Baptist, where I didn't believe in the gifts. However, the last few months, the Lord has put it on me that they are still very real.

I watch a lot of your stuff on YouTube. One thing that scares me the most is speaking in tongues. I can't do it, and I'm kind of scared to, because I hear it's demonic, and I don't want to invite that stuff back into my life. Like witchcraft, I was part of that, and I denounced it when Jesus saved me.

So how do I do it? I've listened to Derek Prince, I've listened to a lot of people on YouTube, and I can't call Derek Prince, so I don't want to call you up. Well, I'm glad the Lord brought you out of Mormonism and deception, and I appreciate your desire to not just open yourself up to any spirit. So first, don't pursue tongues, pursue God, right? And then, recognize Luke 11 13. Luke 11 13, Jesus said, If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask? What does he say in the previous verses? What man is there of you if his son, as for bread, will give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? And then, in Luke 11, if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? In Matthew, Matthew 7, it ends with, Give good things to those who ask. So, be confident in God that as you ask your Heavenly Father, Lord, fill me afresh with your Spirit. Lord, give me everything you have for me so I can best glorify you, that a demon is not going to intercept that prayer. It's one thing if you say, Somewhere out there, somebody send me some power. No, no, no, that's not a biblical prayer. Oh, I just want to feel something from somewhere.

It may not be from above. But you're praying to your Heavenly Father, right? He's listening, he loves you, and he knows how to give good things to you. So, he's not going to let you, as you seek him, for everything he has to glorify his name and to bless you in this world so you can effectively serve him. He's not going to let a demon intercept that. And next thing, you're speaking in a demonic language and under demonic power. So, divest yourself of that fear and seek God rather than tongues. Then understand the purpose of tongues.

It is through the New Testament outside of Acts 2, when Paul breaks down the purpose and function in Acts 12 and Acts 14, it's primarily for our own communion with God. We edify ourselves, we speak mysteries in the Spirit to God. I had a prayer retreat this past weekend. I spent hours during that time praying in tongues, and as I'm praying in tongues, my mind is meditating on the Lord and things of ministry, and then from there I'm praying in English or maybe experienced travail, the real groaning and weeping in prayer.

So, what happens is this. You are not looking for some being to take hold of you, and against your will you begin muttering sounds, right? Or you just stay in a totally passive position with your mouth open waiting for something to move it. No, rather you worship God and you pray, and as you do, if you sense something welling up and rising from within you in your relationship with God, not some terrible, ominous, ugly thing, but just in your relationship with God, with that harmony, that fellowship, you feel something begin to bubble up, then speak it out. I remember when I first spoke in tongues January 24th of 72 at a prayer meeting with, I don't know, maybe a dozen people there, that I was praying and I was asking God to fill me with the Spirit, and I felt something rising up and words coming to my lips, which I then volitionally spoke, and I thought, well, did I make that up? You know, you ever hear scat singing? You know, ba-da-bop, ba-da-ba ba-da-ba ba-da-bop. You know, anyone can make that up, right?

Was that what it was? But then it began to flow more and more, and I realized I'm not making this up. My mind is thinking other thoughts, and my tongue is saying other words, and I'm feeling the Holy Spirit rising in me, and then I say, wow, I can just keep doing this, and it's beautiful and powerful. So let it happen like that. You just be open to the Holy Spirit, not to spirits in general, but open to the Holy Spirit and let everything flow out of your communion with the Lord.

For sure. I've seen miracles performed. The Lord has delivered me. I have my wife from witchcraft, my daughter from being a full-blown lesbian. I've seen every single miracle except for the gift of tugs.

My wife was able to do it, and she's like, I feel peace, and it scared me. I'm like, oh no, we're getting back into some occult stuff, you know? And the Lord got us out of California, Indiana, to here to Westville, Oklahoma, to help a little Pentecostal church. They were praying for someone to help build. That's what we do, and they needed a drummer.

I'm a rock and roll drummer, man. Wow, all right. So Isaac, let me just jump in here. What you can do is just ask the pastor, let's just review the Scriptures again. Remember what Paul said, I thank God I speak in tongues more than all of you. Here you had the Corinthians who were actually abusing the gift and using it in public just to deliver messages without interpretation, and he said, I speak in tongues more than all of you. So if this was good enough for Paul, and it wasn't cult-like or occult for Paul, then be assured it's not cult-like or occult for you. But again, don't put the focus on tongues, put the focus on communion with the Lord, and this will deepen and enhance your prayer life and your communion with the Lord.

Ask the leaders to pray over you, and then as you feel that release, go with it, and the same harmony and fellowship you experienced with the Lord will just grow deeper. Great to hear about what the Lord's done in your life. Appreciate it. All right, let's go over to Mike in Fort Worth, Texas, where I was this weekend. Welcome to the line of fire. Hey, Dr. Brown, how you doing today?

Doing well, thanks. So I had a question. I was in a conversation with my dad.

We've been apart for some years. Anyway, during a conversation that we had, he told me that Romans through Philemon are the only scriptures that apply to Gentiles, that anything else in the Bible that's not for the Gentiles is for Jews. And whenever we were talking about it, he had mentioned that we aren't to walk in repentance or to talk about being in repentance or tell God that we repent, that once we're saved, we don't have to do any of that anymore. So I brought up Acts 26, I believe it's 20, where it talks about Paul has given us the fence to grip up.

And so he said he'd never had anybody approach him with that before, he'd have to check it out. And then, after some time, he said that that didn't apply to us, that we have to learn how to use 2 Timothy 2, 15 to rightly divide the scripture. So tell you what, so Mike, I'm not sure the source of his error, in other words, what got him thinking this way, but of course it's utterly debunked for many, many different reasons. But let's let Paul debunk it himself, okay?

So let's do this. Let's go to Acts chapter 20, okay? Now remember, many of the sermons in Acts are sermons to Gentiles, all right? You have early sermons to Jews, but let's look at this. Let's look at Paul's words in Acts 20, beginning in verse 20.

I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable. Remember he's talking to the elders, the Ephesian elders, and teaching a Republican from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance towards God and of faith in our Lord Jesus. So the first thing is he's telling you that his message was to both Jews and Greeks.

Then if we go back over to Acts 26 that you mentioned, all right? Acts 26, the Lord says to him, verse 17, I'm delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you. So this message is for the Gentiles, okay?

To open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light. Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem, and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, perform in deeds in keeping with their repentance. So Paul is explicitly saying this message was for Jew and for Gentile. In Romans 10, 12, Paul explicitly says there's no difference between Jew and Greek in terms of salvation. The same Lord is Lord of all, richly blessing all those who call on him, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And we know that within Romans, there was a dispute with Jewish and Gentile believers, some of whom would consider certain foods unholy or they wouldn't eat them, or certain days holy and back and forth.

And he was talking about how to live together. And when he's addressing Gentiles, he calls them Gentiles, as in Romans the 11th chapter. So it may be, Mike, based on his reference to Timothy's words about, quote, rightly dividing the word, which really should be translated rightly, handling, that he may have fallen into some extreme form of dispensationalism. And in this extreme form of dispensationalism, pre-Trib Rapture, the church is so separated from Israel, and the church age separated from Israel, that most of the Bible then gets separated from the church.

It's an error, it's like 100 something years old, but it's a serious and dangerous error. And of course, the whole Bible is for all of God's people, as Paul indicates in 2 Timothy 3.16. Certain passages have more specific application than others. You better believe when the Gospels were written. These were written to be distributed to believers, Jew and Gentile alike. All right, friends, back with you tomorrow.