Dr. Brown Answers Your Best Questions

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. The Line of Fire broadcast, Michael Brown.

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866-344-866-348-7884. Any question of any kind. Probe me if you disagree on something. Anything of any kind that relates in any way to any subject that relates to the Line of Fire.

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And we will start with Jesse in Twin Cities, Minnesota. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hi, Dr. Brown. Thanks for taking my call. Sure thing. So, first of all, I wanted to say that I've been meaning to ask this question to you for quite a while.

I just, whatever the case was, I couldn't get around to calling in, so I'm glad I'm finally able to do this. Great. All right, so my question is, how do you see God as an eternal being, yet acting within time? I know you've talked about this, you've talked about how God regrets what He does in some places, but you've also said that God is like this eternal being. So I'm wondering how you see this in terms of, you know, how this duality works. I know you also take the view against God's impassibility, which is kinda what the question is also about. And then also, if you could give me some verses about God's foreknowledge of all things, that would also be great. So thanks.

Sure thing. So, I remember as a new believer, telling the Lord, Lord, if you'll help me here, just give me grace to overcome this, I'll never do this again. Then I thought to myself, well, He knows whether I'm going to do it or not. So if He knows, I'm saying, Lord, if you'll help me in this area, I'll never go back to this. Well, He knows if He helps me, that I'll keep my word, or I won't keep my word.

How will He act based on what He knows about the future? You know, so it's a practical thing to wonder about. But first, let me bring in a human side of this. You can watch a movie from the past, a suspense drama movie, right, or some real tear-jerking movie. You know exactly what's going to happen, you know it's a movie, and yet you watch it and you get absorbed in it to the point that you're in suspense.

It's too much, it's too much, even though you know what's going to happen. So we also have the ability on some level to live in the moment, even though we have knowledge beyond the moment. I had to wrestle with this when I wrote my commentary on the book of Jeremiah, because you have numerous verses where it seems that God is hoping and desiring that Israel will do something different, even using the word perhaps.

Perhaps they'll repent. At the same time, when you ask for verses about God's foreknowledge, I would encourage you to read Isaiah 40 through 48, Jesse. Read it through several times to get the feel for it, the weight of it, where God makes clear that the distinguishing factor in those chapters between the God of Israel and the other so-called gods is that He knows the beginning from the end, and the end from the beginning.

He can tell what's going to happen and proclaim it in advance, whereas the other gods cannot, because they're not really gods at all. And then Isaiah 57, 15 identifies God as Shochan Ad, the one who inhabits eternity. And Psalm 90 speaks of him as, may Allah, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. So, his eternality is clearly laid out in the word. He wouldn't be God if he wasn't eternal. And yet, you have these interesting verses where he regrets things, grieves him, like in Genesis 6, that he made human beings. In Jeremiah, the third chapter, the fourth chapter where he expresses hope in Desartes 36 chapter and other passages in the book. So, my understanding was, and is, that just as Jesus incarnated Himself in this world and willingly put aside divine prerogatives while He was here and lived as a human being, that God Himself in Heaven has the ability to incarnate Himself in our world, spiritually speaking, meaning that He can experience joy and He can experience disappointment, that He can be pleased and He can be grieved, even though He knew before the foundation of the world everything that would happen with every human being and every choice that we would make.

So, that is how I understand how these things come together. The word is too clear in terms of God's foreknowledge to embrace open theism that God does not know things that are unknowable. No, He inhabits eternity, therefore the future and the past are constructs to us, but not constructs to Him living in eternity, which is beyond time. But His fellowship with us is real, and as far as the idea of His impassibility, meaning that His temperament, so to say, is always exactly the same. I don't see that in Scripture.

His nature is always exactly the same. But He does experience joy, He does experience grief and perhaps many of these things simultaneously as things are happening around the world in millions of different ways. So, that's how I understand those things. Back to my original thought in terms of how God would respond to me. My conclusion was that God would meet me in that moment. In other words, that if I said, God, if you'll help me in this way, bail me out of this situation, I'm a new believer, I'll never go back to this sinful lifestyle, that He would answer that prayer based on my sincerity at the moment, even if He knew I didn't mean it or, excuse me, not that I didn't mean it, but that I wasn't going to live it out. If He knew I didn't mean it, He wouldn't respond. The other reason I felt that He would do this was not just responding to my sincerity at the moment, but if He didn't answer, if He didn't help, I could always say, well, I would have unless, if you would only help me, I would have done this, but you didn't help me and therefore I couldn't do it or I didn't do it.

So, it's also a way to constantly vindicate Him against any charges of wrongdoing. So, those are my reflections, thoughts, that's what I understand, scripturally, in terms of bringing all these things together. All right, thank you so much, Dr. Brown.

You are very, very welcome, I appreciate the question, as always. 866-348-7884. We go over to Terry in South Carolina. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hey, Dr. Brown. Hey. Before I begin, I just wanted to say that I feel like one's own religion can lead many into a pit.

That was the first thing that I wanted to say. But I've been reading a lot of prophecy, a lot of people say we shouldn't really worry about prophecy a lot. I think it's very important to really study, I think every part of the Bible is very crucially important to read, and that we can learn a lot from it.

But I also think that reading prophecy is also very helpful to us as well, because I think that's the problem where many Jews are kind of having a problem with accepting the Messiah, I think there's a little bit more than that. But I've been reading some prophecies in regarding to, let's see, Daniel, Zechariah 9, Isaiah 9-6, it all seems to be referring to the same Messiah, not Ben Yosef. But one of the questions that I had, though, was, the first question was, it says, there are some verses where it gets into, let's see, like Jeremiah 39, where it says, But they shall serve the Lord their God, David their king, whom I will raise up for them.

And then you got Ezekiel goes on, just to keep it short. Jews, when I was talking to a Jew earlier today, they're saying that King David is the Messiah, that it's referring exactly to him, and it's not referring to the Messiah. It's talking about David. Terry, that's not the mainline traditional Jewish view on a passage like Jeremiah 30 verse 9, or, for example, Ezekiel 37, you could have quoted where it mentions David. There are some who believe that the Messiah will literally be David, risen from the dead. There are some who would say that the soul of the Messiah was in David, and the soul of the Messiah isn't passed down through the generations until we get to the final Messiah. But the vast majority of traditional Jews do not believe that the Messiah who will come to rule and reign, Mashiach ben David, the Messiah son of David, they believe he is the son of David, not David. That is overwhelmingly the traditional Jewish view. So when it says I'll raise up my servant David, it means the one who will be like David, the greater David, not David literally, but the one who... Would you agree that, as the Messiah, would you agree that it couldn't, like, for me it just feels hard to accept that it's talking about the actual King David because he's dead, so how could, unless you raise him from the dead, but how could that King David come to his own line and then be the Messiah of the knowing that he must be born?

Yeah, exactly. Right, how could David be the son of David? We know, categorically through Scripture, that the Messiah will be the son of David, right?

And as we understand it, through Miriam, Mary, Jesus' mother, he is physically descended from David, and of course, literally, he transcends David. But exactly, he's called Ben David in rabbinic literature, so if a Jewish person told you that they literally expect physical David to rise from the dead, that is not the mainstream Jewish view. The mainstream Jewish view is he will be a descendant of David, a son of David, so you're exactly right.

So are they expecting, like, is it possible it could be, like, a different David and not that same David, or just a different one, if it, I mean, is that... In other words, someone like David, someone from the line of David, like David, they would understand this in terms of, here's what the traditional Jew would believe, that in every generation, not every traditional Jew, but majority of you, in every generation, there's a potential Messiah, and there is a righteous individual that, if the generation was worthy, could be the Messiah. And it would be someone like David, a man after God's own heart, who observed the laws of God and who will be raised up. They would believe that, would recognize him because he would regather the exiles, he would rebuild the temple, he would destroy the enemies of Israel, he would bring Israel in obedience to God, keeping the Torah, he would establish peace on earth, that's how he would be recognized. But that he could be here among us, theoretically, and that if there was sufficient repentance in the Jewish community and turning to God, that he would then be revealed. And, if the generation wasn't worthy, then there would be another potential candidate in each generation because they don't believe he's going to come in the clouds, as we expect the Messiah to come and return coming in the clouds. But again, it would be someone like David, a descendant of David, who would be ultimately greater than David as the Messiah, but certainly not David himself.

When it speaks of David and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, these are about 400 years after his death, they're not talking about physical David rising from the dead, they're talking about someone who would be a greater David, someone like David, the Davidic king, and of course, we declare that he is Jesus, Yeshua, the Messiah. Hey Terry, thank you for the questions. Really appreciate it. 866-348-7884. We will be right back with your calls and questions on the other side of the break.

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.

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We go to Tamara in Mansville, Texas. Welcome to the line of fire. Hello, Dr. Brown. How are you today? Doing well. Hey, where is Mansville located in relationship to DFW?

DFW or Dallas, where? Yeah, yeah. Mansville is actually southeast of Houston.

Got it. So yeah, we're kind of far away from it. Yeah, Texas is a big state there.

I endlessly hear of places I didn't know about at all. Anyway, sorry for the distraction. Go ahead with your question, please. No problem.

So you kind of have to deal with... Still there? Yeah, I'm still here. Okay, I lost you for a second. Go ahead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of them is actually more important to me because it's just from me studying the word. And one is just kind of something off the wall that I kind of heard of and I wanted to get your viewpoint on it. But the first one has to deal with the Feast of Tabernacles. So I know that during the Feast of Tabernacles, Jewish people will make a lulav and wave it as a wave offering. But I have, but from looking at scripture and kind of getting the viewpoint of like smaller, other smaller groups of Jews, specifically the Karaite Jews, they were saying that this is not like what the Torah was talking about. So just looking at Leviticus 23, it lists the different branches in verse 40 that they are supposed to use. And then in connection with Ezra and Nehemiah, Ezra in chapter 3 says that they kept the Feast of Tabernacles as it had been written. And then when we get to Nehemiah chapter 8 verses 14 through 16, it's listing the different branches that they made. And it kind of, in Nehemiah, we kind of get the idea of why these different plants were listed.

They were listed as to what to make the booth out of. So my question with that is that, biblically speaking, are they actually supposed to take these different plants to make the booth out of and not to make a lulav out of? Because I don't exactly see that in the scripture. Right, right.

You're not making a lulav. You're taking this and, you know, waving it, et cetera. According to the script, traditional Jews would say that God gave specific instructions for building the sukkah, the tabernacle that you stay in or you spend time in. They believe that God gave these instructions at Mount Sinai, specifically the size and everything so that it would be the same and it would be uniform as opposed to everybody kind of making whatever they wanted. And here's a list of X, Y, Z. I don't agree with that position at all.

I don't believe it's laid out, X, Y, Z, in scripture. I'm not saying the traditions are bad or evil. I'm just saying there are traditions as opposed to something that God wrote and clearly prescribed in detail in scripture. And when it mentions make of trees X, Y, Z, it's not saying only these or these specifically.

It's saying like this, you know, beautiful trees and nice trees. It's just giving you a general description which then over time, rabbinic tradition fixed in a certain way and in a certain way presenting this to them, you know, the lulav and you buy a certain etrog and all of this. And so, these are just traditions that developed over the centuries. So, I agree with the Karaites that these were not originally what was written in scripture. It doesn't mean again that it's bad or evil, just that they are traditions. The vast majority of what a traditional Jewish person does every day, the prayers that they pray, the customs that they go through, they're not found in the Bible itself. They are developed through tradition and a traditional Jew would say, well, the origins of these traditions go back to Moses.

And that's where we have our big differences. That's why they are traditional Jews as opposed to just saying a biblical Jew because their understanding of the Bible comes through tradition. Just like if you ask a Catholic, hey, show me where that is in the Bible.

They'd say, well, it doesn't all have to be in the Bible because we have church tradition which has been inspired by God, and church leaderships who have been inspired by God, and therefore we have the Bible and tradition. Same with a Jewish person. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for, you know, breaking that down for me.

Sure. The last thing, which is, it's kind of just something weird that I just kind of heard about. I've heard that some people have said that the prophet Elijah, that they are not sure whether he was Hebrew or whether he was Gentile because I know they're saying that he's a Tishbite, but they're not exactly sure what that means. I mean, he does definitely have a Hebrew name. So I'm not sure exactly whether confusion is there when it comes to Elijah. Yeah, there's, it's not really a big dispute, but it is a question.

It is a question. Certainly his name Eliyahu, my God is Yahoo, which is a contraction for Yahweh. Certainly that's clear that he has an Israelite name, and the idea of him being a pagan who challenges the people of Israel, who are you going to worship, is completely absurd. And in 1 Kings 18, where it says that he repaired the Lord's broken down altar, he's doing this as someone in the Israelite family and in the Israelite tradition. So the text clearly presents him as an Israelite. There's no ambiguity there whatsoever as you read the accounts that follow about him. But being a Tishbite, could that have been a Gentile origin?

That's where they ask the question. But the answer is obviously not because of who he's presented as in Scripture. So you're not going to have any traditional Jews or just your average student of the Bible who's ever going to question whether Elijah was an Israelite as opposed to a Gentile. Clearly an Israelite.

Hey, thank you for the question. All right, 86634truth. Let's go to our buddy Eddie in Madison, Connecticut. All right, what's the latest dispute, Eddie? Well, Dr. Brown, I don't know how this Bible study is getting bigger, but it is. But anyway, we talked this week about Isaiah 53, and we went to the part where this offspring, and I heard you teaching on it, where it doesn't say his, it says he'll see offspring.

But the next line got us, Dr. Brown. It says, and he's going to have prolonged days. And I said, wait a minute, what do you mean prolonged days? This is after the resurrection. That's eternal life.

Prolonged days means a long life. It doesn't make sense. So no one can figure it out here, not that we're all geniuses.

But we couldn't come up with the answer with prolonged days. And I said, I don't know, it doesn't go with Jesus, it seems to me. It seems like it should have said days will be forever.

Yeah, well, that's another way of expressing it. In other words, if the text clearly speaks of him dying, which it does explicitly, he'll be cut off from the land of the living, right? He dies of violent death.

I mean, the text is very, very explicit about his violent death. Then to prolong his days obviously has to be resurrection. I mean, you can't live on after you're dead without resurrection.

So, prolong his days, obviously forever. If you look at the end of Psalm 91, for example, a promise of long life. It's just a promise of life, but there's also something more in it. There's a promise of eternal life.

Even in Leviticus where God tells Israel, do this and you'll live, there's a debate among the rabbis. Does that mean just live in this world or live forever? So, it's self-evident what it's speaking of and you don't need to say we'll live forever. If you've been raised from the dead and now your days will go on, your days will be prolonged, so you're not going to die again.

So, it's pretty simple. I think that you and your wonderful group there with your Bible study together so many years, just a little overthinking there. But look at Psalm 91, the promise of long life satisfying us with life is clearly not just in this world. It's forever being with Him.

Same in Psalm 16, promise of life is not just this world, but forever. Hey, thanks as always for the question. 866-348-7884. The more time you give us to get your calls, the better chance we have of getting to them. Hey friends, this is Dr. Michael Brown.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome, welcome to the line of fire. Shout out to all of you who are our regular supporters. Thank you for undergoing this ministry. Thank you for helping us to reach so many more people through radio, through TV, through internet, through books, through resources, through translations going around the world. Thank you for the teamwork.

Yes, we're going to get to reap a great harvest in the days ahead and share the rewards in heaven. Thank you again. 866-34-TRUTH. Let us go to Grady in Geneva, New York. Welcome to the line of fire. Hey, Michael Brown. I'm not sure if you can hear me. I can.

Yes, Michael Brown. So I'm a Gentile convert to Jesus Christ, and right now I'm having a little tension in my faith a little bit. I'm reading a lot of Bart Ehrman and all that, and I'm beginning to get some, I'm beginning to see the contradictions in the Scripture, and listen, even if the, even if, I don't care, I still believe in the Lord anyways, but I really want just your sound advice, because I know you've been in this for a while, and particularly the biggest tension for me is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Matthew versus Luke, and why did Matthew count, he said, I think, 14, but I think one account was only 13. I don't just have any strong tensions, and I still believe in Christ regardless.

I don't care if it's not intellectually feasible, but let's get going. So Grady, well, I appreciate that, but there's no reason to shut off your mind, you know what I'm saying? There may be things beyond our understanding, but if there are blatant falsehoods, blatant contradictions, things that are clearly not true, then it's only fair to have questions, right? It's one thing to say, God's bigger than I understand, or God's ways are higher than ours.

It's another if someone claims that two plus two equals 46, and three minus three equals 81, it's like, okay, something's not right here. So, first question for you, do you think that Bart Ehrman is the first one to discover some of these alleged problems? No, but he's definitely a best spokesman of his. Okay, yeah, yeah. To his surprise, you know, I debated him years ago, I don't know if you ever saw our debate on whether the Bible provides an adequate answer to the problem of suffering, but he was quite surprised when his books became national bestsellers, because he was known as an academic, you know, and now he writes a book for a general audience and suddenly becomes national bestseller, so he's put out one after another, but he was quite surprised when that happened, as was the publisher. Yeah, so he has been very influential, but obviously not the first one to discover this. Now, here's a bigger question for you. Do you think that Matthew or Luke, or let's just say the early believers who received these things as scripture, do you think they were also ignorant that they didn't see what seemed to be like a contradiction or a miscounting or something like that?

No, I don't believe it, absolutely not. Right, because, I mean, these are fair questions to ask, like, were they that dumb? Were they that blind that they passed these things on and then ultimately put them in books together side by side? So, what that's telling me is that they must have had some answers or some understanding, and if we understand that Matthew took several decades before he released his work, so this is not something he just wrote one day, it's like you typed in email and hit send and thought, oh, what did I do?

I can't believe I sent that, right? No, this is something he worked on for years and years. So the 14, 14, 14, he intentionally skips certain people, which you do in the genealogy, right? You go from son to grandson to great-grandson, you have it in the Hebrew Bible all the time, you know, they're skipping down to better names. He does it to have three times 14 to help you memorize it, right?

So, if one has to be repeated for the 14, that's just a simple way of doing it. He's not trying to say it's exactly that amount, because anyone reading the Hebrew Bible would know some names are missing along the way, right? Or comparing it with Luke.

And it could be, it's speculation. By Matthew's day, the Hebrew letters, you know, also represented numbers. In ancient Israel, that was not the case. But by Matthew's day, they did some wonder, did he do that because the numerical value of the name David, David, dalet vav, dalet in Hebrew is 14. It's 4 plus 6 plus 4. So, was that what he was saying? But either way, he did what he was doing intentionally. It's not like, oh, man, I miscounted, yikes, now I noticed it after we've distributed this around the world.

No. And the other thing is, you don't have editors correcting it. If an editor, or excuse me, a copyist notices somebody made an error, right?

You know, it's like my name Michael Brown, Michael Brown, and then one time there's a B-R-W-O-N, you know, I wrote the letters wrong. They'll fix it. They'll, oh, he just made a spelling error there. They'll fix it.

They didn't go fixing this because there was nothing to fix in their minds. As for the comparison with Luke, it's really best, as I understand it, and some in the early church understood, that Luke's genealogy is tracing the Messiah's descent through Mary, Miriam, his mother. And it says that he was the son of so-and-so, was understood to be the son of so-and-so who was the son of so-and-so. So, he was thought to be the son of this one, that he was actually the son and grandson of this one, and that it goes through Mary, which is why Matthew's genealogy traces things through the royal line, so through Solomon, through David, Solomon, et cetera, whereas Luke traces it just the descent from David but through Nathan, not through Solomon. So, there's a deviation way back up there because Matthew wants us to see that in the royal line, Joseph was in the royal line, so the family into which Jesus was born, the father was in the royal line of David. But his actual physical descent, going back to David literally, so that he is a physical descendant of David while also being greater than David, comes through Miriam, his mother. And it's very feasible to read it like that.

It's not a jump or anything like that whatsoever to read it like that, and that to me makes the most sense. And again, I'm not the first one to discover that, but here's what I want to encourage you with, Grady. When I came to faith, I was bombarded with arguments because my dad asked me to go talk to the local rabbi, and then he in turn brought me to other rabbis.

And then once I started college, a year plus later, all the professors I studied with were secular, and if I'd have an ancient history class, they'd be mocking the Bible or saying it's not true. So I got hit with all this stuff, and I didn't know where to go. You didn't have, say, there are plenty of people like me, but I didn't know who they were then. It was like a radio show I could call in and get answers. So I had to study for myself and figure these things out.

And what helped me was the more I studied, the more answers I found. It's like, oh, there is something to, oh, that's why they were doing this. And sometimes we look at something too superficially. Let me give you an example. We all know Einstein's theory of relativity, E equals MC squared, right? That has no meaning to me whatsoever. I'm not a physicist. I'm not a chemist. I'm not a, you know, scientist. As a mathematician, it has no meaning to me whatsoever.

So someone could say, I just discovered one of the greatest scientific discoveries in world history, and here it is. And I'm like, what is that? It's nothing. It's my ignorance. So scholars who've really dug into Matthew, for example, and other books say that the authors like to bury their secrets there, so you have to dig.

It's like, wow, what's he talking about? And now you dig deeper and find out. Have you ever read Josh McDowell's compilation Evidence That Demands a Verdict? No. Okay.

No. There's a new edition of it, Grady. And at the end of it, it actually has a special section about Bart Ehrman because he's been very influential, right? As a scholar, as someone who was a former evangelical, he's been very influential.

And we had very decent interaction when we talked and everything like that. He sincerely believes what he believes. Obviously, I believe he's sincerely wrong. But if you check out the new edition of Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, it'll give you lots and lots of info. It'll deal with lots of your questions and also have a special section that will help you evaluate the materials of Bart Ehrman. Here's the last thing to encourage you with. There are always answers to these questions.

You can always write to our website if you have questions or call again. Don't feel obligated to read all the objections. In other words, once you get convinced like, okay, there are solid answers for all these questions, I don't have to worry, then you don't have to feel obligated, well, I better read the latest Bart Ehrman book or the latest book by an atheist to make sure I'm having intellectual integrity. No, it's like, hey, I love the Lord. I know Jesus is real. I know the Bible is true. So, I'm going to dig into the Bible more to get to know God more.

And when a question comes up in my studies, then I'll investigate a little further. But don't feel obligated to like prove this is several of your faith by having to test out every latest objection from an atheist or an agnostic. So, don't turn your mind off, but don't feel like you have to like, well, I got a new book came out attacking the Bible, I have to read it. Hey, those books have been out for a while, there's always going to be a new attack, and there are always good, solid answers. Thanks, Michael, Bart, because I thank you for your answers, because I came from a charismatic tradition and I have Muslim friends and Jewish friends and they just hammer me on death all the time, and I'm up and coming past there, so I feel like I have to know these things.

I'm overwhelmed by the burden of objectivity and all that. But thank you so much. Yeah, well, that's wonderful. That's why I said at the outset, there's no reason to say I still believe in Jesus, even if nothing makes sense. It's one thing to say I don't get it. You know, I prayed for healing and my child died, but I still know God is good. Because there are a lot of things we don't understand, right? And God is so much bigger and greater, and He can bring good out of bad.

He can bring life out of death. But then there are other things where this is a real question. You know, if the Bible says that so-and-so lived at a certain time and we know that there's no such person and no such place and no such, you know, then yeah, you can question things. But solid people, more brilliant than me, more educated than me, have wrestled with these things over the decades, over the centuries, and have come up with real solid answers. Look, I had to do it, Grady, because of all the rabbis and Jewish friends I talked to as a Jew. I ended up writing five volumes on answering Jewish objections to Jesus. And for many, many, many years now, it's almost impossible to find a rabbi willing to have a public debate with me, you know, unless it's one that's done it a bunch of times and we can work it out, like my friend Rabbi Shmueli. But almost no one will have a public debate with me.

It's like, well, I thought we were so wrong and so ignorant. So, Grady, keep pressing in and now feed yourself some of this other stuff. But start, this is a big comprehensive work, Evidence that Demands the Verdict.

Make sure you get the new edition, Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell. I think you'll find it really, really helpful. And it'll raise a whole lot of questions that haven't been raised yet, philosophical and others, and help you know, and this way you can be sure because Grady, for sure, there are a whole lot of people out there that you're going to minister to in the years ahead with similar kinds of questions. This way you'll be able to help them as well.

God bless you, my friend. 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.

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We go straight to the phones, 866-34-TRUTH. Let's go to Isaac in Austin, Texas. Welcome to The Line of Fire. Hello. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can, Isaac. You're very quiet on my end, but hey, Michael Brown. I'm Isaac, the same Isaac from Rockdale, but this time calling from Austin.

But every time I have a cup of coffee in the morning, I say I'm having a nice hot cup of Michael Brown. I don't know why. But anyway, I have a question about cessationism, charismaticism, and specifically the gift of tongues. There's a local talk here in Austin that, you know, they're cessationistic. They do not believe in the continuation of these things. And I just wanted to, without naming them, read a couple of paragraphs from the website. So this is under a section called, like it says, Tongues, quote, unquote, Realcease is the subtitle.

And so it says, I guess I'll just read it. In 1 Corinthians 14, 8, Paul made an interesting, almost startling statement. Love never fails, but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away. If there are tongues, they will cease.

If there is knowledge, it will be done away. In the expression, love never fails, the Greek word translated fails means to decay or to be abolished. Paul was not saying that love is invincible or that it cannot be rejected.

He was saying that love is eternal, that it will be applicable forever and will never be passe. Tongues, however, will cease. The Greek verb used in 1 Corinthians 13, 8 means to cease permanently and implies that when tongues cease, so I'll go quickly.

It's just a couple of paragraphs. They would never start up again. Here is the question that this passage poses for the contemporary charismatic movement. If tongues were supposed to cease, has that already happened or is it yet future? Charismatic believers insist that none of the gifts have ceased yet, so the cessation of tongues is yet future. Most non-charismatics insist that tongues have already ceased, passing away with the apostolic age. He was right. It should be noted, and here is where they kind of get into the Greek verbs and stuff, and this is where I was hoping you could shed some light, because I honestly, to be quite honest, this just confuses me.

I don't get it. But it should be noted that 1 Corinthians 13, 8 itself does not say when tongues were to cease. Although 1 Corinthians 13, 9-10 teaches that prophecy and knowledge will cease when the perfect, i.e. the eternal state, comes, the language of the passage, particularly the middle voice of the Greek verb translated will cease, puts tongues in a category apart from these gifts. Paul writes that while prophecy and knowledge is the eternal way, tongues will cease.

Let me just jump in for the sake of time. That is absolutely reading something into the text that's not there. It's just absolutely trying to make a mountain out of something that isn't even a molehill. I mean, immediately after this, Paul writes, in the 14th chapter, he writes saying, earnestly pursue the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. He ends the 14th chapter saying, don't forbid tongues. And tongues have been with us through history. They may have been less prominent at certain times, but they've been with us, they're here with us today, in the same way that knowledge will one day cease. In the same way that prophecy will one day cease, tongues will cease, at the eternal age. Now, what's interesting is they're not using the old cessationist argument, which is maybe the last hundred something years became prominent, although this was pretty much unknown through church history, but that's talking about the completion of the canon. When the Bible is complete, the New Testament canon is complete, then tongues will cease.

Well, no, it's explicitly wrong. And that's why it's a tiny, tiny minority position today. You'll find it in almost no top scholarly commentaries on 1 Corinthians at all, even from cessationists, you won't find the argument anymore. But what we do know is this, Paul says don't forbid tongues, earnestly pursue the gifts, right? Especially prophecy. And ongoing prophecy is even more important than ongoing tongues, according to Paul, and yet cessationists would alter a person, reject prophecy.

So, even put aside the argument about tongues and the alleged middle voice there in the Greek indicates something different, put aside that. Don't worry about being confused by it, because on what basis are they rejecting prophecy and saying, clearly, prophecy and knowledge will cease. So, the partial knowledge we have in this world will clearly cease when the Lord returns. We won't need prophecy and we won't need the incomplete knowledge we have here because we'll know God face-to-face, right?

So, when will that happen? When Jesus returns and we are glorified. So, let's just focus on that prophecy. Paul explicitly says to earnestly seek the spiritual gifts especially that you may prophesy.

That's a command. We're commanded to do it until Jesus returns and sets up his kingdom on the earth. And Acts 2, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And notice, this is in the context of speaking in tongues. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, what does Peter say? It is for the last days, which we are in from the death and resurrection of Jesus, until he returns. And he's explaining tongues there. And what does he say in Acts 2 39? If you repent be baptized, you receive what? The gift of the Holy Spirit.

So, this is ongoing. It's for you, your children, and all that are far off and as many as the Lord our God will call. So, it's for all generations until Jesus returns. Interestingly, in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul says if you're all just speaking in tongues in public without an interpreter, someone will think your King James is barbarian. More modern translations say foreigner. In other words, in Greek, it just sounds like you're going bar, bar, bar, bar. It sounds like gibberish. That's what Paul's saying. Back then, it sounds like gibberish to someone on the outside because they don't understand you. But God understands. That's why it's primarily a language for prayer and then in public, primarily with interpretation. Bless you Isaac. Major on the major point there. See how completely wrong they are about prophecy, which clearly has not ceased according to the New Testament.

And then don't even worry about the nuanced argument about tongues, which like I said, is making a mountain of something that isn't even a molehill. Thank you for the call. We've got time for another call or two.

Let's go to Harold in Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to the line of fire. Wow, what a privilege. It's great to talk to you, Dr. Brown.

Thanks. A snippet of testimony because I know time's at a premium. I was saved in 1969.

The girl who led me to the Lord got saved in California and then when I saw the Jesus revolution, it just brought me to tears because that's what I... Are you worried? Yeah, relive your history. Great Lord. Okay.

I have noticed a correspondence between... Hold on. Hold on. I'm having technical issues. I think the devil's in the problem here. Well, Harold, listen, if there's any issue you can always shoot us a night or call another day, but if we're clear, go ahead.

Okay. Okay, if you've lost your first love of the church at Ephesus, Psalm 43 speaks of a heart panning after God. And I won't go through all the seven churches, but if you're suffering for no apparent reason, Psalm 44 speaks of a nation that God established with power, but now has allowed to suffer complete devastation and humiliation. Each of the Psalms 42 through 49 correspond to one of the churches.

It is phenomenal to me. The last one. Let's get started.

Hang on just one second. I love looking into the Word, et cetera, and of course there are eight Psalms. 42 to 49 is eight Psalms. There's seven churches. But Psalm 45, the royal wedding and the prophecy of the messianic king, how does that tie in? Where is that supposed to tie in? Just one example. Okay.

Perigmas, the very power of evil. If you read, oh, Ramsey, he will... But just in short, how does that, because with all respect, Harold, I believe it's forced.

I don't believe it works. I believe you have to, it's almost kind of reading in something that you thought you found something you want to read in more. So, I would lovingly challenge the idea that there's imagery being brought from these Psalms. In any case, it's eight Psalms versus seven churches. But Psalm 45, you don't have to quote Ramsey or anything. That's your bottom-line, clear argument that Psalm 45 is being referred to. It's the very power of the evil, like we did in Percona.

Psalm 45 tells us, extremely beautiful, all-powerful, who will rule the nation. You could dwell in Satan's... Yeah, but see, yeah, with all respect, it's really hard to hear you, Harold, so I've just got to jump in here. I apologize. In love, and no insult intended, I believe you're reading something into the text that's not there. And as you're reading it, it's like, wow, this is kind of similar here, and then you try to make it work. But it doesn't really work with all respect. So, I don't mean to be critical, but just to be honest, you did call for my input, and it doesn't lessen the beauty of the word at all, does it?

Hey, I want to try to answer something really quickly. Josiah in Dayton, Ohio, I don't have time to bring you on the air now, but in terms of Bible study tips, let me say a few things. Always get both the worm's eye view and the bird's eye view. So, bird's eye view, on a regular basis, you want to be reading through the Bible. Whether you read through the Bible once a year, you want to be reading through the Bible regularly so that you keep it in front of you, so that you're enriched by all the contents of it, so you don't lose track of what's written there, right? Then you want to have worm's eye. Focus on a subject you're really interested in.

It could be a word, it could be a verse, it could be a book, it could be an author, and their specific writings, and then dig in as deep as you can. So, you keep the bird's eye going, right? You keep that going, then dig in, dig in, dig in. Just a couple of quick tips. Hey, do you get my emails? Oh, you need to get my emails because they are super informative, super edifying, super helpful. Go to AskDrBrown.org. AskDrBrown.org. Sign up today. I want to be in touch with you. Your program powered by the Truth Network.