The Error of Dual Covenant Theology

According to Jesus, this is the second greatest commandment, but do we strive to practice it? 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. This is not going to be one of those sensationalistic shows. We're not going to be playing some clips where you're oohing and ah, I can't believe that.

Not getting into the craziest, wildest, latest news. Not trying to get more clicks by having some catchy title in our description. No, I just want to talk to you about the basics. I want to fulfill my role as to why I am on the air serving each of you.

Michael Brown, welcome to the broadcast. It is the day before Thanksgiving, and God willing, we will be live on Black Friday, so able to take your calls. Many times that's the day when you're not working, you've got time off, and it's a time you can call in. Normally you can't during work or with school or things like that, so by all means, join us. Even if you're not calling in, of course, join us live and we'll have a special broadcast for you.

Yeah, if you decide, Thanksgiving, it's like, it's the middle of the day, what should we do? Well, we'll have a special broadcast waiting for you as well. Alright, here's the number to call, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884.

As I did yesterday, I want to do again today, any subject, phone lines are open, political, cultural, biblical, theological, personal, spiritual, you name it, and because we won't be taking live calls on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, it'll be Thoroughly Thanksgiving Thursday tomorrow, if you have a Jewish-related question as well, phone lines are open, 866-34-TRUTH. I've said this before, let me say it again, when the most outspoken prophets were loudly strongly proclaiming that Trump would be re-elected, that Trump would have four more years, when that was coming forth, and that message was going out, and obviously it didn't happen, and they were wrong, in my book, The Political Seduction of the Church, I have two whole chapters devoted to it, the wrongness of it, and then how these errors creep in, how these kinds of things happen, how so many could be so deceived. The bigger issue, when you think back, is that you would expect prophets sent by God, not to be just predicting the future, let alone getting the future wrong, okay, obviously they weren't sent by God with that message, clearly, and then you could question how many are truly prophets, that's another question, but you would think if they were prophets sent by God, that they would mainly be telling us what we need to change, what's wrong, what we need to prepare for, what's coming, as opposed to predicting the future alone. In other words, it'd be one thing if prophets, and I'm gonna get to my point in a moment about the commandment that we often neglect, and it's something so essential and so close to God's heart, this is where I'm going, all right, so it would be one thing if prophets told us what was coming so we could prepare for trouble, like in Acts 11, where Agabus prophesies that there's gonna be a famine, so the believers listen to it, they realize it's from the Lord, all right, let's take up a collection because famine hits, it's gonna be really hard on the poor believers in Jerusalem, let's take up a collection for them, so there's preparation, right, so if there was a prophecy about something to come where we needed to be warned, or some good thing that was to come if we would humble ourselves and seek God, that's one thing, but just abstract information about who's gonna be elected, in reality, that's not much different than abstract information about who's gonna win the Super Bowl in football, or right now the World Cup in soccer, what the world calls football, we call soccer, who's gonna win that, and just a side note, for those that are Americans, it's very difficult to understand the significance of the World Cup, but to give you a glimpse, in a massive, this is a total tangent here, in a massive, unprecedented upset, Saudi Arabia defeated Argentina, which has one of the world's two greatest players on it, Lionel Messi, defeated Argentina two to one, and proclaimed a national holiday because of it, and this is just preliminary rounds, but that's how big that is, but anyway, so it's a total tangent, unrelated to everything, just a total tangent, okay, but when it comes to prophetic activity, I would think that the prophetic messengers would be talking about idolatry in the church, or looking to the arm of the flesh, or division in our midst, or those kinds of things, lack of love, and our wrong attitudes, and so on and so forth, as opposed to giving us a prediction about the future, it turned out to be wrong on top of it, and one of the greatest issues, one of the greatest problems in the church is we got so politicized, and we got so caught up for Trump against Trump, and emotions ran so high, that we deeply neglected one of the most fundamental commandments, something near and dear to God's heart, namely, to love our neighbors ourself, namely, to love one another as Jesus loved us, we completely neglected that. I wrote a chapter in one of my Trump-related books called Have We Failed the Love Test, and I had scripture after scripture after scripture about the love were to have one for another, and then compared it to our conduct, our attacking viciousness, I mean, even Thanksgiving and holidays, families had to say, okay, no political talk, because the families would be, I'm talking about believing families would be at each other's throats, emotions running so high, and it's only gonna get more intense with the coming years leading up to the 2024 elections, logically, that's what we can expect things to just intensify.

I wrote an article, instead of they'll know we are Christians by our love by our love, no, they'll know we are Christians by our hate by our hate, that was the title of the article, they'll know we are Christians by our hate by our hate, we were no better than the world, and I would think that prophetic voices would be speaking to us, not saying four more years for Trump, but we need to repent and get our own act in order, get our own act together. Now, it's true that the commandment in Leviticus 19, V'havta l'recha kamocha, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself, and then repeat it elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures, then of course, on the lips of Jesus in the New Testament in different forms, and Jesus saying that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the next greatest is to love our neighbor as ourself. It's true that traditional Judaism discusses that and says, well, who is Re'echa? Who is your neighbor? That's a fellow Jew, that's a fellow Israelite, including converts to Judaism. So, although you should treat all people kindly, unless they're your enemies, the command to love your neighbor as yourself only applies to a fellow Jew. And of course, you can see that sentiment already in Luke 10 in the parable of the Good Samaritan when Jesus responds to one of the Jewish lawyers who says, well, who's my neighbor? Okay, love my neighbor as myself, but who's my neighbor? And then Jesus paints this whole picture and says, and shows the Samaritan is the one who acts like your neighbor.

He says, now you go and do likewise. You be a neighbor to people who are different to you. You be a neighbor to those that are on the other side of the fence. You be a neighbor to those who have different customs. And you show that love. So love your neighbor as yourself is not just within the church.

Within the church, we even have a higher ethic, love one another as Jesus loved us, which is an even greater call to sacrificial love articulated. And we're gonna look at the word about this in a moment. But the reason I'm focusing on this, Nancy and I were talking about this in the aftermath of the Club Q Massacre, the horrific massacre, now another massacre, Walmart today. I mean, it's shedding of blood, shedding of innocent blood, so many families devastated, so many lives destroyed.

I mean, I can't, I try to imagine it, but I can imagine I've never had anything like that happen. And unless it's happened to your family, you've been touched by it, it's hard to even imagine what this could be like. And it's even different than being in war, where you know there are gonna be casualties every day, and that risk is there. It's just people going to work.

Or in any case, people just going to a bar. The last thing they're thinking, is this the last thing I'm ever gonna do, is go there, and I'll be killed. All this bloodshed, the horror of it, but I've been talking this week about the people attacking me. Well, you're the cause of stuff like this. So I said, so excuse me, when I say that whoever you are, LGBTQ+, however you identify, that you're created in God's image just as I am, but we're all saying that Jesus died for you the same as he died for me, and that in the midst of my differences, I'm gonna teach you with love and respect, that based on that, someone's gonna go out and murder somebody?

Come on, please, please. And of course we, when they were told what the shooter's motive was, the alleged shooter, what his motive was, the longer it went, the longer I'm thinking something's not right here in terms of the narrative, because you would've heard something already. If something were to come out about the person, well it turns out, according to the court papers, that the individual with the name being used was not his original name, so all those say, oh, we traced the name, and the grandfather was a Trump Republican, forget that, forget that, because the guy changed his name. And it turns out, he changed his name to distance himself from the father who was allegedly violent to the family, and left the family, and was a porn star, an MMA fighter, and in any case, the guy in the court papers, the alleged shooter, is identified as non-binary.

Identified as non-binary, and using the pronouns they, them. Huh. So maybe it wasn't some crazed, right-wing, Christian, homophobic, white supremacist, insurrectionist, wanted to kill all the gays. Maybe that narrative is falling apart.

Still horrific bloodshed, still horrific suffering. But at a shooting range, he used gay slurs, he could use gay slurs the way a black person used the N-word. You know what I'm saying? And the people said, oh, but it's never like he was gonna hurt people. The guy could just be mentally ill, alright? He could be demonized, and he could've shot up any place.

We simply do not know. But here's the problem. When we have an aggressive agenda coming our way that we speak out against, when we take issue with the sexualizing of our children, we take issue with these different things, those pushing for chemical castration, general mutilation of children, we take issue with the curriculum in the schools, when we take issue with other aspects of gay activism, when we take issue with Disney going woke and having to have more and more gay and lesbian characters in their films and things like that, and pushing things down our throats that we object to, right? And when we speak up against it and speak out against, oh, you're a hater, that's the strategy of calling us haters creates hate. The rhetoric that I'm gonna use is going to draw clear lines, but you're gonna walk away. When I teach others in churches, I say the first thing we need is a broken heart, a baptism of love for those who identify as LGBTQ.

So here's the problem. On the one hand, we're gonna address an agenda. On the one hand, parents are gonna be upset with stuff happening in schools. On the other hand, your average gay, lesbian, trans, bi, identified person is not an activist. It's not trying to get a curriculum in schools.

It's not advocating for biological boys to be in bathrooms with biological girls. Your average person is just seeking to live their life. And could well be your neighbor, your brother or sister, your friend, your coworker. How do we cultivate love for our neighbor? How are we known for our love more than for our stance on righteousness or both together in one spirit? How can we live that out? And how can we have God's heart above all? God's heart for others, the heart that ultimately causes Jesus to go to the cross to die for them, to die for me, to die for you.

How can we have God's heart, love our neighbor in the world that doesn't know the Lord that differs with us, and then love one another in the body? It's big. It's really, really big. We'll be right back. Thanks, friends, for joining us on the line of fire.

866-348-7884 is the number to call. You've got questions, we've got answers. We do that on Friday, but we're doing it as much as we can this week as well.

I'll get to your calls in a little while. Let me just talk a little bit more about love. I know, if anyone would know how upsetting some of the social and moral and cultural issues are, I would because I talk about it all the time on the radio, I write about it all the time in op-eds, I write whole books on the subject, I'm asked to speak on these things in America, other nations, so I'm aware. And I know things can be very upsetting.

I'm just talking about one issue, but there's so many issues in society that are very grievous. And they're wicked people on the left, on the right, in the middle, human beings. They're wicked people doing wicked things.

How can we love them? I mean, we're not talking about not using force when needed. Meaning, if you're in a war, if it's World War II, and you're trying to kill the Nazis before they kill you, and break their power over Germany, over Europe, to push back massive evil, you don't try to love the soldier at that moment in terms of, okay, I'm just gonna let him shoot me because I don't want to hurt him.

No, it's a war, and it's a necessary thing to do to stop more evil from spreading. I'm not talking about if someone breaks into your home, and you have the opportunity to subdue that person. Let's say you're the guy, the husband, and you're six foot three and 220 pounds of muscle, and you are skilled in all types of self-defense and judo and pro, who knows, whatever, or taekwondo, whatever, whatever the thing is. Okay, I'm thinking of something else, just coming to mind.

And you could easily subdue the person breaking in and hold them there, maybe break an arm in the process before they kill your family, hold them there before the police comes. That's a good thing to do. That's the right thing to do.

We're not talking about that. But do you have a desire to see that person be whole? Do you have a desire to see that person repent? Do you wish in your heart that that Nazi would put down their gun and surrender and repent of the evil that they're part of?

There can be love in the midst of carrying out a role. A policeman is rightly going to subdue somebody. You know, here's someone they catch breaking and entering, and they stop right there, hands up, hands in the air, and they put them on the ground, they handcuff them behind their neck, they hold them there until they get other help.

That's the right thing to do. But that policeman could say, man, I'm praying for you, buddy, to get your life in order. I want to see you get right with God.

There can be love in the midst of it. God sees people differently than we do. Yes, he sees evil that we don't see. He sees corruption and hypocrisy that we don't see. But he also sees people created in his image. He also sees people for whom his son died.

He also sees people that could one day shine for him. Look at what some of us were when he saved us. I mean, we were wretches, miserable people, wicked evil people, some of us really doing harm. And God saved us and transformed us. So we need to have that perspective. And then it should really be that even people are not nice to us, that we still love them.

Doesn't Jesus talk about this? If you love those who love you, how are you better than anybody else? I mean, I've done it. I try to be friendly to everybody and smile. And, you know, whether it's checkout counter at the grocery store or someone at the airline or whatever, I do my best.

And if I ever fall short, I immediately try to fix it. You know, the times I get agitated because there's an error that the airlines made, my seat changed or I'm not on the flight I'm supposed to be in. I have to be there to speak. It's an international conference and I'm the speaker and they botch things and it was human error.

And I get a little agitated immediately. I say, I'm so sorry. You're doing your best. And I'll tell them I'm a minister of the gospel. I should do better than that. I am so sorry.

And they're always polite. And no, no, sir, you're fine. But to me, that's important.

I've got to be a witness. I've got to demonstrate that love. So it should be that if you're my neighbor, you're a Muslim, you're a Hindu, you're religious Jew, you're gay, you're bi, you're trans, you're an atheist, you're a fellow believer. It should be that I show you love. It should be that you know me as a loving, to the extent you know me as a loving, caring person that's really interested in your wellbeing. It's a command.

It's big. It's not our nature to do this. It's not in our nature. When I was newly saved, and for probably a few years I did this every single day, I would pray through 1 Corinthians 13 for my own life. One reason was because I had a vicious temper before I was saved.

And I was incredibly nasty and just cut people with my tongue and full of hate and judgmentalism. So this is something I prayed about regularly over the years. And then as the years went on, as I got engaged in other aspects of ministry, say from 2004 on, LGBT issues, et cetera, I knew it's one thing to have an issue with the agenda and to have that prophetic burden to push back against something wrong in the society. But what about the people?

What about the people? So I really went to the Lord and I sat with local gay activists. I made appointments just so they could share their stories with me. I read all the books that I could get my hands on, stories of those that said I tried to leave, you know, I tried to be ex-gay, but I couldn't, I was just putting on an act, and I only found wholeness when I embraced my gay identity. I read the stories of called gay Christians, and different ones, and other activists, secular, and tried to see the world through their eyes until my heart broke for them.

Because I knew that was God's, I knew that was God's heart. One pastor said that the people in my generation, some 67, when we hear the word homosexuality, we think an issue. The young person hears it, they think a person. And we're talking about both people and issues. And it's very difficult if you're going to address moral, cultural issues in your church, which pastors, you need to, because this is the world your people live in. This is the world that the kids, young people live in. This is the environment they're surrounded by.

These are the questions that they're dealing with. Should I go to this gay wedding or not? What happens when my best friend comes out as trans?

What about the kid comes home from kindergarten with a book they're reading, or first grader, you know, King and King, that ends with the two kings, you know, the princes kissing and becoming kings. What do you do? How do you respond? What about my 15-year-old daughter's on TikTok now and says that she has multiple personalities, and some of them are male and some of them are female, so she wants to become trans. She identifies as trans.

This is the world they live in. Or what happens when some really bad thing happens in the school, like in the Loudoun County Schools reportedly where a guy who identifies as a girl went to the girls' bathroom and raped a girl there, and then the school board tried to cover it over, according to the reports. And you're an outraged as a parent. How do you, on the one hand, deal with that without cultivating an attitude of hatred towards your average person who identifies as gay or lesbian, who is also appalled at what happened with the rape?

How do you deal with that? So we must cultivate this where we have God's heart. And you say, that's just not ending.

Correct. Which is why we go to God. And we say, God, would you share your heart with me?

Just talking to Nancy about this. And she said, you should really pray even more for that. Pray when you're with the Lord. Father, pour your love into me.

Pour your love into me. We're going to read from 1 John and Little Wall. We're going to take some calls and then go back to the scriptures, talk about within the church, the body. But doesn't scripture say God is love? Some of us know the anger of God, the righteousness of God, the justice of God, the wrath of God, the holiness of God. But we don't know the love of God.

Yet God is, in his very essence, love. And it was Samuel Logan Bresngell, one of the Salvation Army early leaders, who described holiness as pure love. How about holiness not as what you do and don't do. Holiness is I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't run around with the ladies.

You know, guys would be the old line, the joke. No, no, not holiness defined in that way, but holiness is pure love. And Bresngell was a holiness preacher in terms of don't do this, don't do this, turn away from sin, live righteously. But if we want to be Christ-like, Jesus the Messiah laid his life down for his enemies, for those who hated him, because he saw them as potential friends.

He saw them as ones that would one day be part of his family. So he lays down his life. When he's being crucified, he says, Father, forgive them, they don't know what they do. And even after his resurrection, when he's still rejected by the Jewish leadership, Peter says, you didn't know what you were doing.

You acted ignorantly. Paul says that the Lord had mercy on him, even though he was a persecutor, even though he was a blasphemer, even though he was a violent man, because he acted ignorantly and in unbelief. A whole lot of people are acting in ignorance. There are ultra-Orthodox Jews that spit at the name of Jesus, Yeshua as they call him. They spit at his name. They have no idea who he is. The Yeshua that they know was a sorcerer, was an idolater who led Israel into idolatry. The Yeshua that they know goes straight from the New Testament to the Holocaust. There's a straight line in their mind.

That's the one they're spitting at. They don't know who he really is. And so many people are acting in ignorance and unbelief, but when they meet us, if they can see love, as I've said for many years, if you cut us, we should bleed love. Yes, we take issue with things and we will speak out, but we're not out to demonize everyone.

That's one thing. And secondly, even those we differ with profoundly, we still love. We still pray for. We still get alone and weep for them and say, God, open their hearts, have mercy on them as you had mercy on us.

Love your neighbor, is yourself not an option? A command. Do we even strive to do it? Is it even a holy goal that we have before the Lord? Do we pray about it? Let me be the voice of God to each of us today saying, it's a command.

It's a big command. Everything flows out of that loving God, loving our neighbor. We come back and we go on the phones.

And then after that, then took that loving one another in the church. That's where we go. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks for joining us on the line of fire. 866-34-TRUTH. We're going to take some calls and then get back to the scriptures. A couple of things before we go to the phones.

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Just click to get our emails and you'll also get a free mini-ebook on how to pray for America. That's one thing. The other thing, just more broadly, you are listening to this broadcast for a reason. It's not, as a gossip columnist, you know, the latest dirt and salacious report.

It's not just another conservative talking head giving political opinions and stirring up anger and stuff like that. No, our role is to be your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. That's why we're here. That's why you're listening. So everything I'm talking about today, love one another, it's so important. Love your neighbors yourself. If we fail here, we fail everywhere. I mean, 1 Corinthians 13, we can have all these great ministry accomplishments and be mega-anointed and mega-men and mega-women of God, but enough love, it's nothing, it's nothing.