How You Can Stay Positive and Full of Faith

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. So, how do you stay positive and in faith when the world is going crazy around us? We'll help you with that today. Friends, I want to strengthen you today. I want to bring encouragement to you today. I want to use that spiritual metaphor of holding your hands up.

I'll explain that for those not familiar with it. Pastors, leaders, those on the front lines, moms, dads, single people, believers swimming against the tide of this world. I want to encourage you today and infuse you with God's help, infuse you with faith and with truth and with courage. So that wherever God has you working, wherever God has you placed, that's your mission field. That's your place of influence, even if it seems insignificant outwardly. That's your place. That's where He has you. I want to stand with you so that you can fulfill the purposes and calling of God for your lives.

Michael Brown, welcome to the Line of Fire. I'm opening the phone lines now. If you'd like to call in during the course of the show and ask me a question, just a general Bible question, theology question, a culture war question, maybe you want to challenge me on something that I believe or hold to.

Maybe you've seen one of my videos on YouTube and you think, man, you're way off, you're wrong, you've read one of my articles and you think I'm big at it. Hey, by all means, give me a call. We'll have a friendly conversation.

It needs to be friendly on my end. 866-348-7884. You might say, well, Dr. Brown, I mean, people call all the time and tell you why you're wrong. Why don't you take those calls? Oh, if they called, I would take them. I'd even put them to the top of the list on a busy day when our phone lines are jammed.

Like on a Friday when our phone lines are normally jammed. I'd move them to the top of the list if they were calling to argue with me or dissent, etc. We can't give a whole show to just any caller to call in and debate something. But you said, why don't you give people more airtime? Because they don't call. Because they don't call. So my door is always open for that.

I've said it endlessly. That's one of the reasons that we have live radio. Rather than just doing teaching or cultural commentary or things like that, it's to give people the opportunity not just to call with questions, but to call in to disagree.

866-348-7884. All right. A few things quickly, and then we're going to open up the Word, and then I want to give you some principles to live by to help you have a positive attitude of faith. Not to live in denial, not to stick your head in the sand, not to just say, it's going to be all right, it's going to be all right, it's going to be all right when the sky is falling.

No. But when it seems like the sky is falling, how do we still have an attitude of faith? How is it that we have an attitude of confidence and victory in the midst of the storm? Couple things quickly. I am not getting into a lot of the court cases now with Donald Trump, with Hunter Biden, which potentially could involve President Biden at some point. I'm not getting into any of those. I was not one of the people at Trump rallies chanting, lock her up, lock her up with regard to Hillary Clinton. If she broke the law and should be punished by the law, then let it be. I am not one chanting, lock him up, lock him up now with former President Trump or with current President Biden and allegations and charges.

My prayer is that God would bring things to light, that God would bring the hidden things to light for the good. Look, if someone did wrong and they repented truly before God and they made things right, wherever it had to be made right, well, that's not the kind of thing that used to be shouted for the world to hear. But where things have been covered up, where things have been hidden, where things have been lied about, where things have been denied, then it is a whole different ballgame. I don't know and I don't have an opinion when it comes to all the charges surrounding our various political leaders. You say, but it's so obvious. Number one, depends on which news source you listen to because each one is saying the other side, it's obvious you're wrong and the other side, no, it's a political witch hunt. But I have not delved into this and none of us have all the information at our fingertips.

You say, yeah, but I heard a tape clip. We don't know the background. We don't know the details.

We simply don't know. Whoever's being charged, whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's Hunter Biden, whether it's Joe Biden, whether it's Hillary Clinton, whoever it is, innocent until proven guilty. So let's just pray for equal justice. But if there's something that's a political witch hunt from the left, from the right, from either side, let that be revealed. If there have been wrongdoings, if they're being exaggerated, if they're being underplayed, let it come to the light. Right?

And we could get people all riled up and spend endless weeks and months, even years back and forth and agitated callers and on and on and on. However, it's not going to produce any fruit. It's not going to build anyone up. When I mentioned the biblical metaphor of holding someone's hands up, it goes back to Exodus, the 17th chapter, where the children of Israel are being attacked by the Malachites and now they're fighting back. And Moses holds up the rod from the Lord, the rod through which he worked miracles. He holds up that rod. He's sitting on a mountain looking out over what's happening, sitting on a hill. As he holds up the rod, then the Israelites are winning the battle.

But when his arm gets tired and the rod drops, they're losing. So Aaron and Hur stand by his side. He's sitting on a rock and they hold his hands up. And as they hold his hands up, now he holds the rod and the children of Israel are victorious. There are people who hold my hands up spiritually. There are people on our ministry team who hold my hands up spiritually by carrying things that are heavy for me to carry but easy for them to carry. There are people who hold my hands up spiritually by praying for me and fasting for me and the ministry work that we do. That empowers me and helps me and strengthens me. Many of you hold our hands up spiritually by praying for us, by supporting us. I want to hold your hands up.

I want to be here when you're looking at things and saying, oh, it's all coming down. It's all over. It's too late.

It's crazy. There's no hope. There's no way back. I want to stand in the midst of the darkness with fresh light, fresh encouragement, not just because of my human optimism, not just because I'm wired. It seems the way God made me to be optimistic and to expect the best and to believe that tomorrow is going to be better than today.

No, I want to do it based on the word and based on my relationship with God and let some of the courage and the confidence and the faith that's in me come to you. And sometimes we need that on a daily basis. Sometimes we need that fresh encouragement on a daily basis. Some of you are living through really difficult life situations. I mean, it would break many of us. It would bring many of us to despair. The marital situation that you're in, the situation with sickness in your own life or someone close to you, financial pressure that's about to swallow you up, intense, difficult church situation that's tearing lives apart, whatever it is, there's an infinite number of things that could be happening in our lives here on the earth, endless numbers. But God's encouragement can be real in the midst of it. And Paul wrote to the Corinthians and 2 Corinthians 1 that they were in such a situation, he said, it felt like the sentence of death was on us. It felt like it was all over.

This is it. It ends here. And he said, but this happens so we wouldn't rely on ourselves but on the one who raises the dead. And then you come to the end of yourself and to the beginning of God's grace.

So I just want to give you some practical principles. If you'll take hold of these with the Lord's help and grace, you can have an attitude of faith and confidence, expectation in the midst of the storm. First, I want to read Psalm 112 to you. Psalm 112. It starts with the familiar words, hallelujah.

Happy is the man. So in Hebrew, ashrei, the same word that opens Psalm 1, truly happy. It's equivalent to Jesus in the Beatitudes saying blessed. Blessed is the one who, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who are born, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart. These are the ones characterized by this blessing.

So hallelujah. Truly happy is the man who fears the Lord, who is ardently devoted to his commandments. His descendants will be mighty in the land, a blessed generation of upright men. Wealth and riches are in his house and his beneficence, his giving, his righteousness lasts forever.

A light shines for the upright in the darkness. He is gracious, compassionate, and beneficent. All goes well with the man who lends generously, who conducts his affairs with equity.

Now look at this description here. He shall never be shaken. A righteous man will be remembered forever. He is not afraid of bad news. His heart is firm. He trusts in the Lord. So his heart is firmly established.

He's literally trusted. He's in a trusted state in the Lord. His heart is resolute. He will not be afraid. He will see the fall of his foes. He gives freely to the poor. His righteousness, his generosity lasts forever.

His horn is exalted in honor. The wicked man shall see it and be vexed. He shall gnash his teeth. His courage shall fail.

The desire of the wicked shall come to nothing. His heart is resolute. His heart is samuch. His heart is steady. He doesn't fear bad news.

Now, that's a picture of a godly person in the Old Testament giving generously with these many promises that are coming to that person. The thing I want to emphasize in the midst of this is the state of heart, the state of mind, that they're steady, that they don't fear bad news. It either means they're not afraid of bad news coming because they're trusting God, or even if bad news comes, it doesn't faze them. They don't fear it.

Why? Because their heart is steady, resolute. They know the faithfulness of God. Hey, do you have anyone in your life that has always been there, when they say, I'm going to get this done for you, they do it. When they promise something, they carry it out.

Do you have anyone like that in your life? Well, multiply that beyond anything we can imagine, and that's who God is. And therefore, in the midst of the storm, in the midst of the insanity of the world, and it's been an insane world since Adam fell.

Adam and Eve's first-born son kills their second-born son. I mean, that's the madness of the world. But in the midst of that, you could literally put your head on the pillow, go to sleep and have a great night's sleep, and wake up trusting God and rejoicing in His goodness because His mercies are new every morning. They say, okay, that's nice, but I need some more practical steps. Okay, that's what we're going to do when we come back, give you some practical steps on how you can stay positive in a world that has lost its mind.

Hey friends, Michael Brown here. Many of you know about the radical health transformation in my own life. Starting August of 2014, went from 275 pounds to 180 pounds. Less than eight months, not by dieting, but by radical lifestyle transformation. Getting rid of the bad, unhealthy things, eating only healthy foods. I've kept it up by God's grace now for nine years, going from three headaches a week to no headaches in nine years. Blood pressure as high as 149 over 103, now maybe 105 over 70 on average.

I mean, radical transformation. And I encourage you to look at your life, look at your diet, ask are you going in the right direction, or do you need to make some changes? I also want to help you on a very practical level. I have added into my life as well some great supplements from our co-sponsor, Triveda. In fact, that's why we work with them, because I have personally benefited from these as well.

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I use these. I commend them to you. 800-771-5584. This is how we rise up. 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. Be sure not to miss tomorrow's show where I plan to tell you how God helped me lose almost 100 pounds nine years ago, keep the weight off, how I'm thriving to this day.

I'm going to be really honest with you in terms of the challenges, but in terms of the possibilities and straightforward in terms of what has to happen. But this could really be a show that saves your life or that extends your life or that extends the quality of your life or that of someone that you love. So be sure to tune in tomorrow. And if you missed the broadcast, of course, make sure you have our app, Ask Dr. Brown Ministries, A.S.K., D.R. Brown Ministries.

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866-34-TRUTH is the number to call. All right, how can you stay positive? I'm wired, it seems, the way God made me contributes to my positivity and optimism.

Many of you are not wired like that. Or many of you have just been worn down by life experiences and difficulties and challenges. You say, oh, I used to be, you know, Miss Faith, Mr. Faith. I was just – but I've been crushed too many times.

I've been hurt too many times. Okay, so simple principles. You may have to work at these in terms of renewing your mind and incorporating this into how you live and think, all right?

But these are sure fire if we will come into right relationship with God. Number one is you have to start with God, not with people, not with news, not with circumstances. You have to start with God.

You say, what does that mean? It means that the primary influence in your life, the primary orientation in your life is who is God and what is my relationship to God. If that is steady, if you are in right relationship with God and you recognize who He is, then you know if God is for us, no one can be against us. So you must start with God. If you start with bad news, if you start with doctors gave us a horrible report, if you start with people don't like me and on and on and on, and that's your focus and that's what you think about and that's what you look at and that's what you take in and that's what you're absorbed with, your cell phone, social media, however else and that's what you're filling your mind with, you're going to be negative, you're going to be discouraged, you're going to be hopeless, you're going to feel defiled, you're going to be upset, you're going to be angry, whatever it is.

So you have to start with God. I don't mean that you have to spend every waking moment thinking about God, praying to God, reading the Bible, but your orientation has to start with the reality of God first. For example, if there was a convocation of atheists tomorrow and 20 million atheists from around the world met in the United States to mock the idea of God, I would just feel bad for them and bad for those they were influenced. Is that going to affect me?

Is that going to throw me? The whole world could shake its fist against God, I just feel bad for the world because I know who God is. So it's essential that we do this.

So how do I do that? We've got to take time to be with God and to talk to him and ask him to make himself real in your life. And you've got to take time to meditate on the word and write out scriptures about who he is, his nature, and meditate on them.

Recite them, pray over them, talk to God about them, stick them in different places, have them pop up on your phone so the reality of God and his goodness and his power is the primary reality to you. And that everything else is secondary to that. So even when you grieve in this world, you know that there is hope beyond the grave because of who God is.

So you start there. With that also, following that, is you recognize that God is always at work doing good things. So make sure that you're hearing testimonies about the good that God is doing. I'm encouraged because I get asked to speak in fine churches all around America and all around the world. And in places where people are hungry for God and young people are flocking and the Holy Spirit is moving. And then I hear testimonies from our ministry school grads and testimonies from colleagues and testimonies from others about what God is doing. My pastor colleagues will send me an update. This weekend we just baptized X number of people and our young people are doing an outreach here or the Holy Spirit just moved in the children's meeting and young people are weeping before the Lord.

Take in good words, good testimonies and say, but I'm not traveling in those churches and our church is going through a real hard time. Read books of testimonies. Get on the internet and watch testimonies. There are bonafide, documented, accurate stories that are edifying that are encouraging.

Read books that encourage you. Books on answers to prayer. You read George Miller's prayer journals. Whoa, look at this.

Things that will encourage you and remind you that God is at work. Yeah, I know the devil is at work. I know the world is doing crazy things. I know better than most the world is doing crazy things because I'm a talk radio host and I'm writing op-ed pieces. So I'm constantly reading the news and hearing the news and people are constantly sending me, Mike, have you seen this, Dr. Brown? Have you seen this?

The worst, the worst, the worst, the craziest everywhere. So I'm aware of that. It doesn't surprise me that sinners sin. It doesn't surprise me that darkness is dark anymore than it surprises me that fish swim or birds fly.

That's what they do. So the world is dark. The world is ungodly. The world is filled with pain and suffering. That's true.

That's unavoidably true. But God is at work. So start with God. Then remind yourself of what God is doing. Then remember that he's a redeemer. That everything meant for evil can be turned for good.

These are things to renew your mind to, to take hold of. I remember being in Italy with a ministry, lived very sacrificially, went from city to city in these small tents and trailers and just, I mean, lived as sacrificially as you can imagine just to reach the lost. And they had an incredibly gifted musician with them. Unbelievably gifted. It changed the whole complexion of everything they did.

I was stunned by his ability. But then he crossed a line with one of the gals of the team. So because of that, he had to step down from doing worship. And I said to the leader, what are you going to do now? He goes, just another opportunity for the Lord to be glorified.

He smiled. Just, hey, here's another opportunity for God to fill the void and do something while we pray for our brother's restoration. So that's my mentality. People say, Mike, how do you stay positive when there's so much crazy stuff going on? Well, the same God who showed me that the crazy stuff would happen also showed me that there'd be outpouring of the Spirit, revival and pushback.

So as I see the bad happen, it neither surprises me nor discourages me because I expected it, but I also expect to see God do amazing things. So you start with God, Philippians 4, 6-8. You bring to him every request, every concern, every weight, everything bothering you, all the anxiety, all the grief.

You give it to him. He gives you his peace. And then you focus on the God things, the good things. You hear, remind yourself of what God is doing and journal, journal answers to prayer. Journal your prayers and then go back and review them months, years later. I've been stunned, even though I keep a lot of this in my head, I've been stunned to see how many prayers have been dramatically answered because a lot of it happens gradually. And you don't even realize the change came and you look back and you think, what in the world happened? So you go back and you remember, hey, the last time I was in a crisis, it had seemed like it was all over.

I journaled it, Lord, I'm sinking for the last time it's over and God worked miraculously and here you are in better shape afterwards. Journal that, go back to those things and your faith will be encouraged and then do good. You determine I'm going to help a person, I'm going to pray a prayer, I'm going to feed a person, I'm going to give here, I'm going to stand here. And as you give out, God gives back in. As you give out, God's pour is back into you. And you begin to see instead of pity party, feeling bad, getting inward, you look outward, help others and you begin to see this life flow come.

I mean, just a few simple principles if you can change your whole outlook on life. We come back, we'll head over to some of your calls and then I've got to tell you a wild story but I'm not surprised. We'll be right back. Dr. Brown, I used to be a practicing homosexual, I listened to you, I heard grace and truth together, I was changed. We hear from pastors who say thank you for speaking with compassion but giving us backbone and courage. And we know across America so many believers are getting healthy and strong through listening to the broadcast, through listening to these messages as we tackle the controversies, the most difficult issues of the day.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. The 866-34-TRUTH. And if you want to probe me on some of the simple principles I just gave you on how to stay positive and have an attitude of faith, by all means, by all means, give me a call. I hear you but I still have questions.

By all means, give me a call. And obviously, having a solid relationship with the Lord. I'm going to add this in. Having a solid relationship with the Lord where you come into His presence and experience His grace. You experience His joy in His presence. You experience that sense of His love.

Perfect love casts out fear. And in His presence there is fullness of joy. So, having that habit of worship and adoration, fellowship with Him. There may be songs you play that take you to a certain place or touch a certain chord in your life.

Then play those. Maybe they bring you to a place of joy and celebration. Maybe they bring you to a place just falling on your face and weeping before the Lord and His beauty.

Those things get our perspective in the right place and then renew our mind and our emotions in a healthy, life-giving way. Okay, one thing quickly. I did an interview yesterday with Sean McDowell, Josh McDowell's son, professor, apologist in his own right on the subject of angels. We talked for about an hour. He has great, great questions and we'll let you know when that airs.

We'll be posting it on our social media when it airs. I think it's an interview you'll really enjoy. And I told him he did the hard work coming up with the right questions. At the end of it, we were talking about a series I did many years ago, but it's the standard one that we use on spiritual warfare, 12 hours of teaching. And then a series on angels, demons, and deliverance, 12 hours of teaching.

So, 16 sessions, 24 hours of teaching. He said, oh, I'd love to listen to those, so we're making arrangements for him to listen, but if he had been one of our torchbearers, one of our monthly supporters, he could be listening for free. That and many, many other classes that people pay to take and have paid to take for years, you get to listen to for free, plus additional exclusive video content. You may be a monthly supporter and don't even know all the benefits, so be sure to find out. We do our best to inform you of them.

And then if you join our support team, one dollar a day, to help us make an impact around the nation. Friends, the pushback is here. We've been telling you for years it's coming.

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And the moment you're signed up, as soon as you get the email from us, you'll have access into all these free online sources. All right, we go to the phones with Jeannie driving a truck somewhere in Nebraska. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Brown. Hey. Hi, my name is Gianni. I'm sorry, I'm a little nervous. Ah, but just the two of us talking, man. We're good, Gianni.

Yes, sir, yes, sir. Dr. Brown, I was raised and I was taught that the soul and the... Okay, that we are spiritual beings that possess the soul and inhabit a body. That the soul and the spirit are fused together, but that they are not the same thing.

I wanted to ask your expert opinion. What does the original scriptures say about this? Does it differentiate between the spirit and the soul, and what does the rabbinic literature have to say about this? Hey, thanks for the question, though, it's interesting. I got almost the identical question asked in a very similar way just a few days ago.

So it's just interesting for this to come up again. So when you read the Bible in Hebrew and you read the Bible in Greek, so the Old Testament, the New Testament, they will say similar things in different ways, right? You know, for example, when the Hebrew Bible talks about man in his flesh, basar, it's really pointing to human weakness, frailty.

When it talks about, in the New Testament, man in Sarek's flesh, it's talking about carnality, right? So it's different aspects of being in the flesh, you know, the weakness of humanity and the sinfulness of humanity. So the words, some of the words are similar, soul, spirit, some overlap.

So here's the long and the short of it. The long of it is, I do believe we can dissect the human being into spirit, soul, body. And then even within soul, you know, the realm of mind, emotions, consciousness, etc., we can further dissect that. So it helps us to understand that there's a difference between soul and spirit. Hebrews 4, 12, the word of God cuts to the very division of soul and spirit. And Paul prays for a sanctification, 1 Thessalonians 5, spirit, soul, body. So it's very helpful for me to realize, okay, I'm not in faith.

Faith is a spiritual quality, a spiritual reality. I'm just emotional. I'm just worked up emotionally about this.

I'm hyped up. It's, it's soulish. It's not really spiritual. There's a Greek term we have for that sukakos in the New Testament, soulish in that negative sense, right?

And once you get to rabbinic Judaism, then it divides things into little different ways, which we don't need to get into here. But I find it helpful to recognize what is of the spirit, what is of the soul in my own life. To know, no, no, this is something God spoke. I know that I know that I know it. I have it in my spirit. I'm sure of it versus something I just got excited about emotionally. So you may be watching some old classic movie and you're sitting there crying.

And the moment someone turns it off, the spell is broken because it's just soulish. No one's actually dying. No one's actually sick. This is actually a tragedy. It's just actors acting. We get caught up in that. That can happen in the soulish realm. That being said, both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament, so the Bible that we read, the word for soul, nefesh in the Old Testament and sukay in the New Testament, can mean the person as a whole.

Like 3,000 souls were saved that day. It means people came to faith. It can also just refer to that inner being, soul slash spirit, as the inner being. Hence in Revelation 6, the souls of those who were beheaded for the Lord. That's talking about the entire inner being. So it's absolutely right, Joni, to say that as human beings, we are body and soul. We are outer being and inner being, outer man, inner man.

That's absolutely right. And when we speak of spirit, we're speaking of spirit and soul. When we speak of soul, we're speaking of soul and spirit. So fused together as one, if you like, that's our spiritual being. That's who we are outside of this physical body. If you break it down further, who we are outside of this physical body, if you break it down further, we can divide between soul and spirit.

So here's why your question is important about what I'm talking about today. A lot of us live more in the soul realm than the spirit realm, using this distinction. A lot of us live more in the realm of emotion and feeling, right? And our minds in that sense can be weak. And just, you know, fear can grip us because we're not built up in our spirits. If we're built up in our spirits and our mind is renewed, then when the terror comes, when the fear comes, when the dread comes, when the bad report comes, there's a wall of resistance. Not just because I'm tough mentally and disciplined, but because there's true faith behind it.

And that's what we've got to make sure that we do cultivate our innermost being so that we are strong in spirit and then renew our minds and bring our emotions and subjection to divine truth, then we're unshakable. Hey, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate it. 866-34-TRUTH is the number to call. Let's go to Jesse in Tucson, Arizona.

Welcome to the Line of Fire. Thank you, Dr. Brown. It's been quite a while since we spoke. More than 20 years. I used to know you when I was a pastor in Southern California. Really? Yeah, yeah.

It's been a while. And since I left Christianity, I was a Messianic rabbi for quite some time and left Messianic Judaism. And now I just call myself a fool for Elah, or a fool for God. And one of the things that I wanted to discuss with you, and perhaps we can further discuss, you know, off air, is that the blindness in part to the house of Ephraim, and the blindness in part to those of my flesh, which are Judaism, the blindness of Christianity, although they have a lot of things right, Jesus being God, being given authority by the Father, not being the Father, but being given authority, but Christianity is the times of the goyim, and the times of the goyim actually kind of being part blindness, meaning that if you ask a lot of Christians today, what is the good news? They will say, well, Jesus is the good news. But if you read Mattathiah or Matthew chapter 24, amongst many other passages, you know, Yeshua said, the good news of the kingdom will be preached to all the inhabited earth as a witness to the nation. Right, so what's the good news? Well, the good news... Let me ask you this, Jesse, let me ask you this, without commenting on anything else that you said, do you think we have a good model for what the good news is in the preaching in the book of Acts? Do you think that those that were with Yeshua day and night, that were with him in his earthly ministry, that were with him after he rose from the dead, that received the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, do you think that they... Oh, absolutely.

All right, so they preach clearly the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, right, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and forgiveness of sins coming through him. That is the good news that he came, that he died, that he rose. That's part of the good news. The part of the good news is, but you have to remember, the good news is the reverse of the Tower of Babylon. So the Tower of Babel, it divided the nations. The good news is the restoration of Israel. But it's not the reverse of the Tower of Babel, because people were in sin before the Tower of Babel.

People were lost before the Tower of Babel. Hey, listen, Jesse, why don't you shoot a note to our minister? If you're open, if you're open, then we'd be happy to do our best to help you out and perhaps withdraw from some negative extremes, intrinsic screams, overreactions to things.

But shoot us a note, and we'll see if we can be of help to you, if you're open. I'm Paul Burnett, a board-certified doctor of holistic health, and I want to take this opportunity to talk to you about the importance of healthy blood flow and how it's enhanced by a miracle molecule known as nitric oxide. You see, blood vessels release nitric oxide, which increases blood flow known as something called vasodilation. At TriVita, we take blood flow seriously for our members, and we've developed a nitric oxide-plus supplement that has been formulated with natural ingredients designed to maximize nitric oxide production in our blood vessels, which increases blood flow. You may be wondering why you don't have as much energy as you used to. One study that I came across revealed that by the age of 40, we only produce about 50% of the nitric oxide production as compared to our 20s, and by the age of 70, the study showed that we're only producing about 15 to 25%.

I have good news. As we age, there's another way for our body to increase nitric oxide production, and that's by converting nitrates and vegetables like beetroot into nitric oxide. Bottom line, with more nitric oxide, we stimulate more blood flow to our vital organs, and we experience more energy while supporting healthy blood pressure. TriVita's nitric oxide-plus has been formulated to increase nitric oxide production and blood flow at every age. To place your order for products to support your wellness goals, call 1-800-771-5584 or online at trivita.com.

As a TriVita introductory offer, use promo code BROWN25 and receive a 25% discount on the products of your choice. Call 1-800-771-5584, 800-771-5584. May you live with greater wellness. This is how we rise up. 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, it's Dr. Michael Brown. Friends, a healthy church starts with a healthy you. Yeah, so be sure to tune in tomorrow, where I tell you about my own weight loss journey and practical things you can do to change your life and in many cases radically change, transform your current state of health.

Yeah, so it's going to be a really good show by God's grace and I'll do my best to take calls as well. And yeah, along with healthy eating, which is foundation for everything, healthy eating and exercising, I do take some key strategic supplements. One of our team members, I guess early 40s, in good shape, exercises, always been thin, but his blood pressure was a little high. He started taking nitric oxide and found within a few weeks it dropped by 10 points on both sides and has stayed there.

Yeah, so these supplements can really help. Find out more at 800-771-5584, 800-771-5584. Remember to tell them Dr. Brown sent you. All right, let's go over to Richmond, Virginia. Lawrence, welcome to the line of fire. Hello, Lawrence, are you there? All right, I guess not. It was a vitamin-related question. I was curious to see what it was. Here, so everyone knows. You heard Dr. Brown, you're not familiar with me.

I have a Ph.D. in Semitic languages, technically Near Eastern languages and literatures from New York University. I'm not a medical doctor. I don't give medical advice on the road.

I've had medical doctor friends on who've answered questions for it. I don't give medical advice. I'm not a nutritionist.

I'm an expert in terms of what happened in my own life. If you say, well, Dr. Brown, why do you eat this food versus this, my wife will tell you. Nancy can tell you. She's dug in, studied nutrition for years and years and years. If you want to know the guidelines we follow, it's Dr. Joel Fuhrman, Eat to Live.

Get online, watch one of his videos, or get his book, The End of Dieting, or if you're dealing with type 2 diabetes, the end of diabetes, or heart disease, the end of heart disease. And this is not like some gadget, gimmick, try this. No, it's like reality. You stay in the rain, you get wet.

You eat certain foods, you get sicker, you eat other foods, you get healthier. Generally speaking, it's kind of simple. So that much I know. Okay, let's go over to Los Angeles. Chris, welcome to the line of fire. Thank you, Dr. Brown.

Thank you so much. I've got this book called The Hebrew Gospel of Matthew by George Howard. I'm a Christian, I've been a Christian, a devout Christian for most of my life. I'm 52 years old, and I've been wanting to understand the Gospel of Matthew more. And so I heard about this book recently, The Hebrew Gospel of Matthew by George Howard, and there was a debate with someone named Shem Tobe Ben Isaac Ben Sheput, and this is in the late 1300s, and I'm wondering if you've heard about this translation. Oh yeah, the book's not a new book. It's been out for a couple decades plus, right? Yes, correct.

So George, here's the deal to try to help here. So there are some early church traditions that mention a Hebrew Matthew. There's a famous saying of Pappius, which is preserved by Eusebius, that says that Matthew compiled the sayings of the Lord in Hebrew. Some would argue that he was saying it's an Aramaic.

He compiled those and then everyone interpreted them as they could. But that's not necessarily the Gospel of Matthew. There are others, Jerome, some of the early church leaders, that claimed among the Jewish believers that they had seen a Hebrew Matthew, right? So there are references to this, but there are no ancient manuscripts. In other words, we have ancient Greek manuscripts.

We don't have ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew or of any other portion of the New Testament. And then we can debate if Jesus originally primarily spoke Aramaic, which I believe he did and could have been Hebrew here and there. Others argue he used Hebrew more.

Separate debate, all right? And the Gospel of Matthew as we have it today, that's written in Greek. From what we can tell, it was not a translation from Hebrew into Greek. It was written in Greek. So there would have been a separate work if there was a separate Gospel of Matthew. But we don't have any copies of it. So we know over the centuries that the Gospel of Matthew was translated into Hebrew from the Greek. We know that.

There's no debate. There are many, many manuscripts of Hebrew Mathews that are many, many, many centuries later. And we all know they're translations from the Greek. What George Howard found that was interesting was that, and so why would, well rabbis might translate it from the Greek or with the help of someone get it translated into Hebrew so that they could better understand what the missionaries were saying. Whether they could debate the missionaries or refute the missionaries, right? This is where they had it in their own language. What George Howard noticed in one particular manuscript was it had certain plays on words that if you're, when you're translating, if you're just trying to get a message across, you don't come up with plays on words and beautiful ways of translating. You do that if you believe it's true.

You do that if it's sacred to you. So what he asked and then Nehemia Gordon, a Karaite scholar, so a Jew who doesn't believe in Jesus, but is not a traditional Jew, then he popularized some of George Howard's writings and then went on with his own stuff. So there are other books that have been written on this.

The George Howard one got a lot of attention when it came out. But it's, I would say very few scholars believe that there are fragments of an original Hebrew Matthew that are preserved in these medieval manuscripts. And some of it would simply be a question of how do they get preserved through so many centuries without any written evidence anywhere? And then how do they get incorporated in a rabbinic translation from Greek into Hebrew? So I remain skeptical as to whether we have, whether scholars have actually discovered fragments of an original Hebrew Matthew in these later writings. It's fascinating, it's worth thinking about, but what God preserved for us and what all the early church recognized was the Gospel of Matthew as we have it in Greek. When the Greek writing, the Greek speaking church leaders in the first few centuries are writing or quoting from Matthew, they're quoting from that same Gospel that you read today. When the Latin leaders, Latin speaking leaders were quoting it, they quoted from it as it would read in Latin in the Vulgate. So there's no question that what God preserved for us is the Greek Gospel of Matthew. Whether there was an original Hebrew, or another Hebrew, or an abbreviated form in Hebrew, that's all speculation, there's something was there, we just don't have it, we don't have access to it.

Thank you. The question I had was, in the Greek there's a word called, there's a verb for the will or willing called phthalo, and sometimes it's translated as desire or wanting. But in this version, the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew that we've been discussing, the consistent verb that is translated is wish, and I was wondering, is there a special biblical understanding of this Hebrew word for wish that maybe gets lost in translation to English? No, no, it can come out either as desire or longing, the root al-vah in particular would be used. Yeah, this is not one of those words that it doesn't have a good Greek or English equivalent, and there's something missing in the translation. No, I wouldn't say so at all.

The words for wish, for desire, for want, for longing, the various words that can be used, looking forward to, expecting, desiring, nothing comes to mind in Hebrew that would be difficult to put in Greek or difficult to put in English in any way, nothing that we're missing at all. Thank you so much for your time, sir. You are very welcome, and sorry I gave the general answer before your specific question, but there you have it. Do I have time?

Okay, really quickly, Tom in Toledo, Ohio, time is short, please weigh right in. This is Bob, am I on? Yeah, you are, we just gotta go quick, this show's almost over. Alright, will do, I found a very simple way to define spiritual and body formats taken from the creation account, and that is God makes man on the dust that's body, he puts the spirit inside of him that's breath, and the life that is produced, he became alive, that is the soul, and so the life that you see in a human being, that's the soul, and it could possibly refer to the body or the spirit because it's made up of both. When the spirit flees the body, the soul disappears, the spirit has consciousness, but it can't be the same soul.

So, the error there, just super quick, because time is almost out, and I want to honor your point by responding. When God breathes and puts spirit in, spirit can just be breath. Breath is different than ruach, numah, spirit, meaning, the same word can be used, but it doesn't mean breath, our spirit is not breath, our human spirit is not breath. Hebrews 12 speaks of the spirits of righteous men made perfect in the heavenly city of Jerusalem, or the heavenly Zion. That doesn't mean breaths, spirit, and then where human beings become a neshamah, a living soul, that just means a living being. So, that distinction doesn't actually work in terms of how the words are used later. I appreciate the thought, and I apologize for jumping in like that, just no alternative.

With the clock ticking on us. So, I appreciate the thought, but I would say it actually doesn't work in terms of how the word spirit is used elsewhere, or Hebrews 4.12, how the word divides between soul and spirit. It's clearly talking about something very different there. But I appreciate the call, and you weighing in. Be sure to join us tomorrow as we talk about transformation in my life, how it could happen in yours. Be sure to download our app if you don't have it. Ask Dr. Brown Ministries, ASK, to your Brown Ministries.