What Is the Meaning of “By His Stripes We Are Healed”?

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Hey friends, this is Dr. Michael Brown. You know, we've been on the air 13 years daily, five days a week. We've never... ...studio in Winston-Salem. Looks like they made some changes last night, and it must have thrown their entire system. My apologies that you did not get our normal introduction, and I trust the studio is trying to figure out what in the world just happened. But it's me.

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That is the number to call. All right, I just noticed a post on Facebook, of course the person was removed, calling me a devil, and saying, why don't you debate an Israelite, meaning a so-called Hebrew, got one set up, hopefully another one set up, and we've talked to people that have called in. I've never been the one that's run from the debates.

It's never happened. So once people resort to the name calling and the attack, it just reminds me of how little truth they have behind them. That being said, give me a call. All right, that's your position. That's why we've got open phones, right, so people can call in and differ.

866-348-7884. We're going to dig into the scriptures today and ask the question, what does it mean when Isaiah said, by his stripes, by his wounds, we are healed. If I did a more literal translation, it would be at the cost of his wounds, there is healing for us. Does that have anything to do with physical healing? Is it only spiritual healing? Is it only our redemption, our forgiveness of sins?

Is it only physical? Is it both? Is it that when Jesus died for our sins, he purchased our eternal salvation, but when he was whipped and bruised, he purchased our healing? What does the text actually say? So let's go over to Isaiah, the 53rd chapter, and I want to remind you that throughout the book of Isaiah, the image of Israel as sin-sick is very prominent, starting in the first chapter. In other words, Israel as apostate, as in rebellion, as separated from God, is pictured as being sick from head to toe. But that is not only a spiritual picture, it was also a picture of the state of the nation. In other words, that picture of being sick and bruised from head to toe and beaten from head to toe, that picture of Israel at the beginning of Isaiah 1 now translates out to your cities are burnt with fire, your fields are decimated.

In other words, it is a physical image as well. And elsewhere in Isaiah, where God speaks about smiting and healing, in the 19th chapter of Isaiah, or the 30th chapter of Isaiah, it was a real smiting. In other words, with God's judgment, it wasn't just spiritual, there were physical results, physical consequences as well. But this image of being healed, of being sick and being healed, comes up again in Isaiah 53.

So I'm going to start reading from verse 1. Who has believed our message? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain.

In Hebrew, yishmachavot viduacholi, so a man of pains, and so machov is pain, so yishmachavot, a man of pains, viduacholi, and intimately familiar with sickness. There's minor translation debates here and there on certain things in Isaiah 53 that are not as relevant to our discussion. And of course, I'm understanding this is a messianic prophecy.

I'm not going to get into the defense of that. Just search for Isaiah 53 on our YouTube channel, AskDrBrownASKDearBrown, or on our website, AskDrBrown.org, or check out our relevant videos on RealMessiah.com for our robust defense of Isaiah 53 being a prophecy about Jesus, Yeshua, the Messiah of Israel. So, here's what it says. He was despised and rejected by man, a man of suffering and familiar with pain, or familiar with sickness, like one from whom people hide their faces. He was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering.

Achhen choloyen hunasah u makhovenu svalam. In Hebrew, literally, Achhen choloyen hunasah, literally he bore our sicknesses and carried our pains, all right? That's what it is literally in Hebrew, speaking of sickness and pain. But those can be metaphorical, I understand that. They can be speaking of a spiritual condition, I understand that.

In the prophets, all right, I get that. And you know, you can say, I'm in great pain, does that mean physical, mental, emotional, it can have varied meanings, we understand that. Surely, he took up our pain and bore our suffering. So, notice the ESV, for example, doesn't say sicknesses like the Hebrew, but pain.

So let's just stay with a more little translation. Surely, he took up our sicknesses and carried our pain. Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for or because of our transgressions. He was crucified because of or for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds, we are healed. By his wound, we are healed. We know like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

And it goes on from there. So is that just talking about our redemption? If you go over to 1 Peter, the second chapter, Peter quotes that, we were like sheep going astray, but we've returned to the shepherd and bishop of our souls, by whose stripes we are healed.

So Peter refers to that, yes, people were physically healed as well, but his primary emphasis there is being reconciled to God, so it is a spiritual healing that's spoken of there. And that would be in keeping with language elsewhere in the book of Isaiah. If you look at the Septuagint, it looks at this, so the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew, it looks at this in spiritual language. He himself bore our sins, and was pained because of them. So the verse I read earlier, Chien chol yin hin hin as-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wabaraktuh Surely he's borne our sicknesses and carried our pains, right? The Septuagint renders it, he himself bore our sins and was pained because of them. So it gets rid of sickness, right, and just turns it into sins.

The Targum, the ancient Jewish translation paraphrase that was read in the synagogue, says then for our sins he will pray and our iniquities will be forgiven because of them. So it totally spiritualizes it. So is that what it's talking about?

Well here's what's interesting. When you go to Matthew, the 8th chapter, verse 16, after the Sabbath they bring to him those who were sick, right, those who were under demonic power, and he healed all the sick and drove out the spirits with a word, right? Then verse 18, this, referring to the healing of the sick and the deliverance from demons, was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah, he took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.

Isn't that interesting? Matthew doesn't follow the Jewish translations that existed in his day. It does not follow the Septuagint, which he quotes elsewhere, and New Testament authors frequently quote because they're writing in Greek and it's in Greek. Matthew will sometimes quote the Septuagint, but here he translates directly from the Hebrew.

We're unaware of where else he would have gotten it from because the Targum, the ancient Jewish translation paraphrase that I mentioned, doesn't see it literally as well. But Matthew says that Jesus doing this, Jesus healing the sick, did it to fulfill what was written in Matthew, in Isaiah the 53rd chapter, he himself bore our sicknesses and carried our pains. So, one answer would be, and you'll find this in study Bibles, you'll see in other writings by those who don't believe that healing, physical healing is part of the atonement, they would say that when Jesus was doing his earthly ministry, right, Isaiah 53, 4, he's doing his earthly ministry, that's when he's carrying our pains. That's when he's bearing our sicknesses. So, he fulfills that Jesus fulfills that by healing the sick, right, and he heals the sick during his earthly ministry. I believe this is a quote from Pastor MacArthur, let me just make sure there, yeah. No, actually this is in the New Schofield Reference Bible, here I check that. The Lord took away the diseases of men by healing them, he died for our sins, not for our diseases.

That'd be one way of reading it. But here's the big problem, here's the big, big problem, are you ready? It's gonna be a big problem, so here we go, I'm gonna go back to Isaiah 53, stay with me, cause this is a big insight, alright? Surely, he took up our sicknesses and carried our pains, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. When did we consider him stricken by God and afflicted? When did we, the Jewish people who rejected him at that time, when did we look at Jesus as, you're a smitten by God, you're paying the price for your own sins, you're under the judgment of God, when did we do that?

When he hung on the cross, that's when we did it, when he hung on the cross. But Isaiah says, surely he took up our sicknesses, carried our pains, but we, we mistook that, we mistook that and thought God was judging him, thought that God was cursing him, thought that he was suffering for his own sins. In other words, Jesus took our pains and carried our suffering when he died on the cross, and we misjudged that and thought he was dying for his own sins. Oh, now we have another problem, but Matthew, hang on, but Matthew attributes that, his carrying our sicknesses and pains, to his earthly ministry.

How do we reconcile that? I meditate on that deeply when I was working on my book Israel's Divine Healer and studying these issues decades ago. Really meditated on that, came to a conclusion, and then found, to my delight, that D.A. Carsten, his Matthew commentary, and Franz Delich, and his Isaiah commentary, had similar comments, similar thoughts, which was that the whole ministry of Jesus is vicarious. The whole ministry of Jesus, in a sense, is an aspect of vicarious, substitutionary suffering. That he comes into our world and takes our sickness, our pain, our disease, our anguish, or takes it all on his shoulders, and then, then goes to the cross to strike at the root cause of all of our suffering, namely human sin, and dies for our sins so that healing can come for the whole person. Everything was purchased at the cross. His whole ministry, in a sense, vicarious, substitutionary, everything purchased at the cross by his stripes were healed. It's not just spiritual, and certainly not just physical.

It is all and all has been purchased there. Some of the results we'll only experience through eternity, but it's all been purchased at the cross, and some of it, much of it, can be realized in this borough. We'll do right back. This is how we rise, oh. It's our resistance.

You can't resist us. This is how we rise, oh. 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, welcome to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday.

I'm going to get to your calls shortly. But in my book, Israel's Divine Healer, which, by the way, if you want to get it, it's a technical book, so it's not light reading. It's got 80,000 words of text and 85,000 words of endnotes, but you'll find it to be the most in-depth study that's been done of God the healer in the Old Testament, and probably the most in-depth academic study in English, period.

It came out in 85, but I just want to warn you, if you get it, it's a technical book. So, Alfred E. Deschamps, I quote him in the book in his famous Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, talking about people who look at the healing of Isaiah 53 as either spiritual or physical. He said, I can scarcely find words strong enough to express my descent from those who live in Isaiah 53 for either on the one hand to spiritual or the other to physical sicknesses. The promise is one of future deliverance from both, of a restorer from all the woe which sin had brought. When you look at Isaiah 53, it's got sin, iniquity, all these other words for transgressions, and then it's got sickness, pain, because they're all intertwined. The reason there'll be no sickness in heaven, no depression in heaven, no fear in heaven, no violence in heaven is because there'll be no sin in heaven. That's where there'll be no death there. So, do I believe that when Jesus was whipped, he paid for our healing, and then on the cross, he died for us?

I don't make that separation at all. First, the flogging is all part of the death process, part of the crucifixion, so I don't make that distinction, and the wounding is an overall wounding, so I don't make that distinction. Do I believe the text is saying, we are already healed, we just have to realize it? No, I don't believe that any more than I believe that we are already saved, so an unsaved person is already saved, they just have to realize that when they realize it, then they're really saved.

No, no, not at all. Rather, healing for the whole person was purchased at the cross, and at the cost of his wounds, there is healing for us. Now, we will die, right? We will ultimately die physically in this world, unless Jesus comes first, so we await our resurrected bodies, and no one's saying that we will be free from sickness in this world, but hey, Jesus died to give us complete power over sin. There's no reason why I have to be a slave to sin, and yet we still sin.

So in other words, there are things available that we don't fully appropriate. Has everything been purchased at the cross? If someone's healed, is that through the cross? Yes. Do I believe that everyone would be healed in this world?

No, but here's the key thing. It starts with forgiveness of sin and right relationship with God. I mean, God might heal someone as a sign of his reality, but it starts with forgiveness of sins and being in right relationship with God, and then everything flows out of that, the healing for the whole person. Look at it like this. Think of a giant V. I call this my V diagram. Jesus comes into our world. That's the top of the V on the left, and now he enters into our pain. He enters into our suffering. He cares for the sick, the needy, the demonized. He takes all the filth of this world on his own shoulders, and then he gets to the root cause of all of our suffering, sin. That's the bottom of the V. Put a cross there, and he dies for our sin. Now, out of that flows healing and redemption beginning with forgiveness of sins.

That's why that is an always, and then there are other things we can appropriate. There's mental wholeness. There's emotional wholeness.

There's physical wholeness. There's healing in many other ways all purchased there, so that's the V going back up on the other side as we appropriate what's been purchased at the cross. Do I believe healing is in the atonement?

Do I believe restoration is in redemption? Yeah, of course. Absolutely.

All right. We're going to go to the phones momentarily, 866-348-7884. We got a great response yesterday when our Director of Operations or our Director of Ministry, Cindy, called in just to talk about what she's experienced arthritic inflammation and the benefits of nopalea. I've been using it sometimes because I work out heavily and intensely.

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He is moving in many churches. And partnering with TriVita gives us a great unique opportunity to say, hey, here's something that will really benefit you personally and then at the same time will benefit others around America because we're going to spread this message together with God's help, your help, TriVita's help. So I just want you to check this out. Harvard studies, others have said chronic inflammation is the greatest threat to humanity. Here's something you can do every day to push back against the silent killer and to improve the quality of your life. Check this out. We'll be right back.

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You can do that when you know that the product's worse. When things work, I'm excited to share. Do you ever have that? You know, you go to a restaurant, oh, I gotta bring somebody here or you see some, read some amazing book or hear some music, you wanna share it. So I've been really excited to share this with you, knowing also we're helping you and then you're helping us help others around America. 866-344-TRUTH. Let us go to Natalie in Detroit. Welcome to the Line of Fire.

Hi Dr. Brown, God bless you. I had a question about the word Hades. So I am teaching Acts 2 to our church's youth group tonight, and I know in Peter's sermon, he quotes the psalm, prophetically speaking about Jesus, about how the Lord would not abandon his soul to praise. So what I want to understand is, is Hades talking about death in general, because I know it's speaking about death could not hold him, but then in the Gospels it says that when Jesus is speaking to Peter, he says, on this rock I'll be in my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I know it's commonly translated to the gates of hell, so is Hades referring to hell or death or darkness?

Could you give me some insight on that? Yeah, great question. So it's quoting from Psalm 16, which in Hebrew is Sha'ol, which then in Greek would be what we get as Hades, okay? So it's the place of the dead, the realm of the dead.

Sha'ol could potentially even refer to just physical burial, but it's really the place of the dead. So Jesus, when he died, was somewhere, okay? And David, as he's even looking at his own future, seeing the Messiah in his own future, sees that he's not going to just die and his body perish like everybody else's. Rather, that's where he prophetically sees the resurrection.

That's what Peter gleans from Psalm 16. So Sha'ol, Hades, the place of the dead. And that just means you're not going to leave in the grave slash place of the dead. Where the dead are and in the grave, you're not going to leave him there. There's going to be a physical resurrection. His body's not going to rot there.

He's going to be physically raised. Gates of Hades, yeah, commonly translated gates of hell, but that can be misleading, right? Because it's not talking so much about some, you know, Satan and, you know, the hellish demons and things like that. However, the best way to understand it, and there's a lot of debate among Matthew scholars on this, Greek scholars, but the best way is Hades being what it is, the symbol of death and the realm of the dead, that not even death itself is going to stop this. Whether it mean martyrdom, whether it mean our own death and resurrection in the future, that not even the powers of death itself can stop it. So we, you know, we can often spiritualize and say the forces of hell and the forces of darkness, which is, you know, it's not wrong to preach that and say that, and I'm sure I've done it as well, but really it's talking about death itself, which is, you know, the ultimate battle, the ultimate stronghold, the ultimate immovable thing, and the ultimate thing that hangs over people.

Hebrews 2 speaks of the fear of death and Satan's involved with that. Not even that is going to stop it. We will keep marching on even through death, martyrdom, it doesn't matter. God's ecclesia, God's family, God's church, his body will march forward and nothing will stop it. Hey, thank you for asking.

We'll march right through those gates in that respect. Appreciate the call. Thank you. 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, friends, to the line of fire broadcast on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. Let's go back to the phones. We go to Howard in North Carolina. Welcome to the line of fire.

Hi, Dr. Brown. Just a quick question. On the news today, you saw where the main rabbi in Israel had mentioned that he would authorize us being kosher meat that was grown in Teshu by a company that's doing it in Israel. I just wanted to get your feelings on, I don't know what the definition of kosher is from a Hebrew standpoint, your feelings on growing meat and authorizing it as kosher.

Alright, so I am absolutely unqualified to give a rabbinic answer on that in terms of rabbinic laws of what's called kashrut, kosher laws. It's very complex. Rabbis are specially trained in it.

They will supervise how animals are slaughtered, they will supervise other things in processes of preparation of other foods, to see if things are kosher. Amazingly detailed and that is not an area of specialization for me. However, Howard, because I saw your question on my screen and I had a break at the bottom of the hour, I actually did a quick search for this because I've never given it any thought before this.

Most things I'm asked I can just answer right out of my head. But I saw your question, I thought, well, that's an interesting one. So when I got online and just searched, this discussion has been going on at least 10 years.

I'm finding articles going back at least 10 years. And there's one, let's see, this is 2015 and our answer is test tube meat kosher. Observant Jews are abstaining from meat for nine days to mourn the destruction of Jerusalem's ancient temples, but one day even bacon cheeseburgers might not be off limits.

It's an extreme statement. But it seems that for various reasons the rabbis are saying, yes, it is kosher. So I have no expertise whatsoever to comment on whether that's legit or not because I'm not fluent in the laws of rabbinic kashrut. I would just say this, that when you read the Bible, you see certain animals couldn't be eaten, Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14. Those are the basic prohibitions. But rabbinic Judaism has also deduced from certain texts that there is a ritual way to slaughter and the animal must be slaughtered a certain way. And we know about the draining of blood, that we get in numbers of scriptures.

That's part of it. But then rabbinic Judaism adds all kinds of things. You can't have meat and dairy, so milk and meat at the same meal.

So there have to be several hours apart. If you go to the home of a religious Jew, they have two sets of plates. So they're used for different purposes. This is milk here, dairy here, meat here because you don't want to mix them and things like that. So all kinds of extra laws get added.

If you're heating something in an oven somewhere, you do it a certain way. And on and on it goes if it's not officially kosher, etc. So all I can say is if you get online, you'll find a bunch of articles about it going back 10 years. And based on rabbinic logic, obviously, many are saying, yes, it's fine.

It's good. But all the logic behind it, all the minutiae, I'm just not expert in it to give you more details. So in terms of that's their system, whatever they say is good.

But in their system, that's their call. All right. That's the best I can do to answer you.

I appreciate your time. I didn't know it went back that far. Yeah, yeah. And again, it was honestly, Howard, I have devoted the entire thought that I've given to this question just happened now. I've never thought of it myself, even though this is an older question.

I never thought of it myself. All right. Thank you, sir. And I just want to give a heads up because many times someone will call and raise a question like, I need to study that more or it triggers something in me. I don't think this one.

I don't think I'm going to do more study on this one. But thank you, sir. I really appreciate the call. 866-34-TRUTH.

Let's go to Ian in Washington. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, my question pertains to how the Jewish people really reconciled with someone that was saved by God, you know, replaced by God, someone with their Holy, the Holy Spirit, but still contended with demon. Okay. I'm not sure I understand the question in terms of how Jewish people would think about that.

Well, um, I get that they were talking about how it's like, um, Jewish, uh, the, the today's Jewish Thursday. Yeah. Uh huh. Okay.

So the, um, the, the basically I was trying to figure out like how as a Christian, how, how we perceive, um, a saved person, a person with the Holy Spirit, but someone that's still, um, battle. Right. Right.

Okay. So I'm, I'm going to give you just a short, I appreciate you trying to bring Jewish people in, but our call screener was obviously telling, telling, uh, dear Ian here that this is only Jewish related calls on Thursday. So I guess, uh, this attempt to make you Jewish. So it's not how Jewish people think about that.

So just a super quick answer. Um, how do you view someone who's saved that still battles with demons? Just that they're saved, but they're in a battle. And one way or another, there is a place where you can get free, uh, either greater consecration to the Lord, if their area is not consecrated, if there's, you know, open sin, things like that. Uh, if someone has some counseling issues need help in, if someone needs to get delivered from certain strongholds, um, or otherwise, just as we're moving forward in God, we have opposition and resistance, which we'll always have, but our life should not be one of torment in the Lord. Our life should be blessed in the midst of the battle. That's the short answer only in keeping with the integrity of thoroughly Jewish Thursday, but thanks for trying to make it Jewish relevant. I appreciate that. 866-34-TRUTH.

Let us go to Bastrop, Texas. Sid, welcome to the line of fire. Yes, Dr. Brown.

Uh, thank you for allowing me to call in. Uh, my question is just concerning, uh, in the Torah about the prohibition of adding to the word of God and also in the book of Revelation about adding to the, adding to the word of the, of this prophecy. Uh, when people do translations, I'm thinking that one particular translation, the passion... Hang on, hang on, hang on one second.

Let's just be specific. The Torah says do not add or take away from these commandments. That's twice Deuteronomy 4, Deuteronomy 12 or 13, depending on if you're reading Hebrew and English. Uh, so it specifically says don't add to the Torah.

And then Revelation 22, don't add to the words of the prophecy of this book. Yeah. Okay. So you're, you're a question then about Bible translations.

Go ahead. Yeah. So I know, uh, some people, um, uh, say that certain translations, uh, like the person specifically like the passion one, uh, when it's like a paraphrase, are they in a sense adding to the word? Uh, because I mean, they're not in the sense of trying to convey, uh, what, what this passage says.

Right. So there, there are two ways of looking at it. Uh, first it's important that it stated that this is a paraphrase and I've talked to Brian Simmons about that. It's really important to say it's a paraphrase. Now, certain of the passages are not paraphrase and certain are, and some are very, very paraphrastic.

So it's really important to say it up front. And then I believe it's another four or five years before the complete revision and translation is done. So at that point when it's done, uh, it's either going to be less paraphrastic, it's going to be much closer to a, um, uh, to a more, it's nothing exactly literal.

You can't do exactly literal from Hebrew to English or from Greek to English, but either it'll be less paraphrastic then or it'll just stay openly. This is a paraphrase. But to think of it as a translation, it is misleading.

And I don't want anyone to do that. Now on the flip side, when you understand it's a paraphrase like, okay, I'm conveying with my understanding in an expanded way. I'm saying, in other words, here's another way to say this that's, that's more expanded. So I could say, um, you know, Sid called and, and he was, he was running to get to the phone and he was breathing heavily and I could say, Sid called and I could hear him chugging and huh, and breathing and, and, and, and so I expanded on a little to get the point across. So as long as someone knows what they're getting, like the message Bible, as long as you know what you're getting, that you're getting Eugene Peterson expressing as best as he can, what he understands the scripture says, but anyone reading it, like I'm going to get on my knees and open up the word and say, God, I want to hang on every word and look at every word and get, and, and no, no, don't, don't do that with a paraphrase.

Uh, you don't want to do that. So I've, I've urged people not to use the passion or the message as their primary translation. Same with the amplified Bible in a different way because the amplified Sid is giving you lots of choices, right? You know, that, that the, the Greek, the Hebrew has these varied meanings and then it's reading in such a way that it takes away from the power and flow of the word and then it's not really telling you, okay, it's, it's more this choice than these others.

So it is amplified the same way. I tell people, don't use that as your primary translation, but there's something secondary. I've, I've quoted paraphrases and even technical scholarly work is like, I like the way that's, yeah, that nails it.

Or when preaching it's like, boy, that nails the sense of it. Uh, but we have to be careful because if I'm going to start to say, let's say I'm doing in depth study of the Bible and I can only read in English. I don't understand Hebrew or Greek. So what do I, I'm going to get like 10 or 12 or 15 different translations. You know, you go to a website that has Bible translations like Bible gateway and I'm going to look at this in, in 20 different versions.

It's like, okay, they all say the same thing. So I'm confident that that's what the Hebrew or Greek says. Every word, I'm going to look at every word here. God, what are you saying? How am I going to understand it?

If I'm able, I'm going to look at the Hebrew or the Greek the same way. But if I do that with a paraphrase, now I'm studying in the microwave words that weren't in the original text. So that's why you've got to be really careful with that. Use it as a, if you have a disclaimer, that's good. Yeah.

Yeah. If you have the adequate disclaimer, for example, pastor Mike Winger who has a, and I'm, I'm, I'm friends with Mike as well, not close friends or I'm not close friends with Brian Simmons, but friends over the years, colleagues. So Mike Winger who, who hired scholars to review the passion translation and has videos that have been watched hundreds of thousands of times critiquing it. He said, if it said it was a paraphrase upfront, he never would have made the videos.

That was his issue. And, and, um, so have the disclaimer, make it clear. And I know on the passion website, it said you can use this as a primary translation.

So I differ with that. I don't know if the language is still there, but I differ with that with all respect to Brian, who I know really loves the word. He really loves the word and really wants to convey what the word is saying to others. That's his heart. That's his burden as a God lover and a word lover.

And as someone who was involved in Bible translation in the Amazon decades ago, but say what it is paraphrase, let it be known, put the disclaimer on, Hey, I really appreciate the question. We'll be right back. 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, welcome to 31st Thursday. Hey, listen, listen, we still have some seats left on our Israel trip. Yeah, just talking to Cindy, our director of operations, we still have some seats available. It's not too late to get on board and go. So go to our website, askdr.brown.org.

You'll see the info there or just write in for more info. The trip of a lifetime, it's going to be an amazing, amazing trip on every score. We've got some great prayer warriors coming. I plan to have great prayer meetings at night. Some of the nights we'll do some Q and A in the evening. You'll get to sit in on live radio.

That's all the bonus in addition to the tour of a lifetime during the day. So there's still time, but you've got to get right on it. You sign up and boom, you're in. And then you can just book your own flights and the flights that work best. But now is the time if you've been thinking of going, it's May, okay?

It is the second half of May that will be there. So by all means, get signed up. More info at askdr.brown.org. Hey, one more reminder. Yeah, a call to find out how to get a free bottle of Nopalea, how to deal with chronic inflammation, how to improve.

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Tribeta is bending over backwards to be a blessing to our listening audience, which I really deeply appreciate. All right. We go back to the phones with Joseph in Two Falls, South Dakota. Welcome to the line of fire. Good afternoon, Mr. Brown. Thank you so much for taking my call.

You're welcome. So my question is regarding a fellow brother in Christ. He is Messianic.

His name is Kevin Jeffrey, and he has a Messianic organization. He published a translation a few years ago. It's called the Messianic Jewish Literal Translation, and he uses the baseline for the translation of the Young's Literal Translation. I know he's working on the Old Testament right now. I just wanted to find out, what are your thoughts if you've ever had a chance to actually look at this translation and maybe share some thoughts if you have? Okay, I have not looked at the translation. Kevin, I got to know Kevin some years ago when, if I'm correct, I endorsed some of his Messianic discipleship material and found him to be a lover of the Word as well and a serious student of the Word and someone who was mainstream, in other words, not getting into all kinds of flaky side issues.

As I recall, we haven't had much interaction over the years, and I'm just looking at his website calling the body of Messiah to maturity by teaching the simple application of Scripture for a radically changed life in Yeshua. Do you know the name again of his translation, what it's called? It's called the Messianic Jewish Literal Translation Bible. Messianic Jewish Literal Translation.

Ah, here we go. Messianic Jewish Literal Translation, New Covenant Scriptures, came out in 2018. All right, so I have not reviewed it, but you're saying this, okay, let's just see. So it's Matthew, Matthew, Jethro, Revelation, Thresh, Vibra, and True Translation, New Testament, and the other, based on the groundbreaking Young's Literal Translation, the MJLT and CS is an exhaustive update, re-running of the, okay, so I'm not a particular fan of Young's Literal Translation.

In other words, it's not one of those, like, wow, this is amazing. So what he did in the description here was he took that, as you said, but he basically updated so Jesus will become Yeshua or Mary will become Miriam or law, where rightly translated, will become Torah. That would be my understanding. If I was, with all appreciation to Kevin's efforts and his love for the word, as I said, and he seems to be careful in the work that he does based on me getting to know his stuff some years ago, I would either read the Tree of Life version, which is a Messianic translation by a team of scholars, directly from the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament. I was actually involved in the New Testament side, reading and reviewing the translation of the Epistles, the letters to check for accuracy and things like that.

Craig Keener, Professor Keener was involved, not in the translation but in some of the oversight and response. I interacted with some of the scholars in the Hebrew Bible part, which would have been my specialty. If you want something that's Messianic, but that's straight from the Hebrew and the Greek, the Tree of Life version, and then of course there's the classic Jewish New Testament by David Stern, which is really Messianic. You need to use the glossary a lot in the back of it to figure out who's who and what's what, but that was really used by the Lord. David went to be with the Lord last year, but that's really opened a lot of people's eyes to the Jewish background, the Jewishness of the New Testament. So either of those I'd recommend, and they are on the whole Bible, there's the complete Jewish Bible, what David Stern did with that is he took the 1917 Jewish Publication Society Translation and went through the Hebrew and updated it, but recognizing it's a Hebrew scholar, so he just updated that and made that a little more Messianic sounding, because that was open to the public use, and then did his own word for word from the Greek translation. So the complete Jewish Bible, if you want something that is super Messianic, if you want something that's Messianic but reads in a little bit more familiar way, the Tree of Life Bible, both of those I would really recommend, and not that the Young's Little Translation is bad, but it was never something to me that was special that I would want to like, wow, I've really got to utilize that. I think there are many English translations today that are better than that, just in terms of regular English translations.

So that's my thoughts there. No, absolutely, and also, I will say this, there are some things that are interesting about Kevin Jeffries' translation, I just recently purchased it. It does use the critical text, but it takes also the Texas Receptus variances and put them in the footnotes. He also reorganized the New Testament to kind of be chronologically aligned with when they were written, to give a better context for the passages as well. Oh yeah, I appreciate that, and I'm not saying it's not to be used by any, especially not having reviewed it, and with my respect for Kevin, I'm just responding to the larger—yeah, so thanks for giving those further details about it.

I'm all for having the textual variants for the Textus Receptus as well in the notes, good for that. And what's interesting, Joseph, is that when I started reading the Qur'an years ago, the first surprise was after the opening chapter of the Fatihah, everything from there on, chapter two to the end is in size order. It's not in chronological order at all, it's the biggest books, you know, the longest chapters, then the next long, so it starts with the cow, sort of the cow, and then it gets shorter, shorter, shorter thereafter, until real short ones at the end.

I didn't realize that that's—you know, I thought, how dumb is that? Who organized like that? But interestingly, in our Order of the Letters of Paul, that's pretty much how it goes. Not entirely, but it starts with Romans, which is longer, then First Corinthians, which is next, of course, that then relates to Second Corinthians.

So it's not entirely like that, but it's pretty much like that as well. So there's nothing wrong, the actual order that we have, that comes later than the acceptance of these things as scripture. In other words, these words of Paul or the Gospels were recognized as the Word of God, recognized as part of the text that we call the New Testament, before they got in the specific order that we have. So to read them in a different order is not sacrilegious.

The order comes later than them being part of the Word. So yeah, I appreciate those innovative parts of it, and I'll definitely check out the Messianic Jewish Literal Translation. I appreciate it, Joseph, thanks so much. Thank you. Shalom. All right, yeah, shalom.

Okay, I am not going to take any more calls, simply because I've got a minute and a half left. Can I encourage you, friends, that there's so much more of God to be known? I don't mean intellectually, I mean spiritually, experientially, that He is so far beyond anything that we could conceive. And there are so many treasures, riches in the Word, waiting for us. At times, I feel embarrassed by how little I know of God and the Word. Oh, there's so much that I know that I could teach for hundreds of years and not run out of things to teach.