Are There Secret Bible Codes?

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. Is there any early Jewish Thursday broadcast?

Michael Brown, thrilled to be with you. Those who are watching today we're going to tackle the question of Bible codes. This was a big, big subject some years ago. You don't hear a lot about the Bible. You don't hear a lot about the Hebrew Bible. If it's Jewish related, give me a call. 866-348-7884 about Yeshua being the Messiah.

Phone lines are open and I'd love to get to as many of your questions as I can. Today we're going to tackle the question of Bible codes. This was a big, big subject some years ago. You don't hear about it as much now. But there was a best selling book on Bible codes, New York Times best seller.

Suddenly this became a major topic. Jewish intellectuals, scientists, mathematicians saying, wait, we were skeptics, we were atheists, we were agnostics and now we're finding these codes in the Bible. We're doing equidistant letter sequencing and ELS and we're seeing if you count X number of letters here and just plot out the Bible just like one massive text. The Hebrew Bible and you get these messages and we're finding striking things. We're finding the names of famous rabbis and then over here, here's the birth date.

Here's when they died and then here's someone was assassinated or here's something that happened in history. Now there were never predictions that were discovered. In other words, no one said, hey, we've discovered a code that tells us that the 9-11 terrorist attack is coming.

We've discovered a code that tells us that this tsunami is going to hit this place this day. But they allegedly uncovered a lot of things from the past and these were people, again, great intellectuals who said this must point to divine inspiration. This could not have been a human creation and they became traditional Jews as a result of it. And then many Christians said, yes, it's wonderful. It's a proof of the inspiration of scripture and it's very exciting and hey, if you count X number of letters here, you'll find the name Yeshua embedded in key texts and isn't that amazing and here's the message coming out and it's all coded. And then, of course, on a different level, you had the Russian New Testament scholar, Ivan Panin, who found all these mathematical, extraordinary, what would you call them, happenings, occurrences, where it just seemed, the New Testament, miraculously inspired you can see by looking at the Greek text and numerical formula found within it. So, let's put that aside.

Let's put Ivan Panin aside entirely. And let's just ask the question about Bible codes in the Hebrew Scriptures. So, what many people didn't know, what many Christians didn't know who got very excited about this, was that these so-called codes, Bible codes, Torah codes, were being used by Jewish outreach groups.

They would be doing these discovery seminars. So, you invite your Jewish friend to come, the person's not religious, but they're open to find out more and the Bible codes would be used to say, hey, look at this. Look at this. This is proof of the inspiration of Scripture. Now, on the surface of it, I don't have a problem with something hidden being discovered that points to the inspiration of Scripture. That's different than trying to find pictographic meanings in the ancient Hebrew script because the sky's the limit. You can read anything in the world you want into it. And people are coming up with all kinds of meanings for the letter.

It's like, how do you know that? Who told you the letter means this and this and this and this? But, wow, some undeniable information that's there could point to inspiration of Scripture. Well, what many Christians didn't know was that some of these same rabbis that did these seminars, I'm not saying these were the scholars, the scientists that discovered or felt they discovered these codes, but some of the ones that were popularizing it and teaching it, they would also use the codes to show that Jesus was the false prophet, that Jesus wasn't the Messiah. So, you think, hmm, well, what do those codes actually mean?

So, here is why I was always skeptical about the codes. Number one, that's not how God communicated in His Word. Were there some mystery having to do with the number like you have in the book of Revelation, really the most overt time, and this requires wisdom, it's the number of man, 666.

Okay, so is that Caesar's name in Greek? And many would argue that that was the first reference and then pointing to an end-time Antichrist and whether it symbolizes. Well, the Bible is telling you it's symbolizing something there. But outside of that, how is the Bible communicating?

When the New Testament is quoted in the Old Testament, how is it quoting it? In a secret code, in hidden language, or based on what the words say? When God's telling us how to live and giving us instructions, is it in a secret code or the words that are being communicated? As I'm speaking to you now, if you're able to go back and find that every 11th letter, if you put it together, it brings some sense. Well, I'm not saying that would just be some bizarre coincidence because I'm communicating to you with words and ideas and concepts that are understandable. So, that's how the Bible communicated.

That was number one. Number two, for ELS to work, it would have to mean that there was no change in spelling in the history of the Hebrew Bible. I'm not talking about the actual words, but the spelling of the words. So, in English in America, if you went back far enough, we spelled color, or labor, or favor, F-A-V-O-U-R-C-O-L-O-U-R-L-A-B-O-U-R. Now, it's just O-R.

It's been like that for many, many years. If you wrote the word worshiping years ago, you'd have two P's. Now, it's spelled with one P. Judgment used to have an E in it, and then after the G, that got removed. If you go to England, you'll still have the older spellings, right?

So, spelling changes. And we know in the history of the Hebrew language, that spelling changed. So, the way Moses would have written something, if it was then being spelled, say, by Malachi, roughly a thousand years later, some of the spelling would be different a thousand years after Moses. So, once you factor that in, you realize, okay, the spelling changed, so if there was a Torah code when Moses wrote the original spelling, it's not going to adhere in the current manuscripts that we have, and vice versa.

So, that was another reason for the skepticism. The first was the biggest one, was does God communicate in secret codes or in clear language? Even if it's prophetic language, so now we have to seek the meaning of those words that have been given, but it's still the words there, not some secret code.

That's number one. Number two, the spelling has changed over the centuries, and therefore the codes would have to change because they're based on the exact letters that we have. So, an ultra-orthodox Jew would say the spelling of the Torah has been unchanged through the centuries, but historically we know that's not true. And then thirdly, some have said if you look hard enough, you can find this, just print out the text, right, so just going straight across or straight down, of any big book, and you can find almost anything you wanted.

This has been illustrated, for example, and I just want to, I'll go through this for those who are listening only, which is most of you just listening, not watching, to make sure everybody can follow this, but I'm going to put a graphic up. This is assassinations foretold in Moby Dick. Now, it's a satire. In other words, it's not actually claiming that these assassinations were foretold in Moby Dick, but it says the following challenge was made by Michael Drosnin, who was a sincere believer in the Bible codes and wrote one of the best-selling books. Quote, when my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them. That was Newsweek, June 9th, 1997. So, someone has gone through the words here of Moby Dick, the entire text, hundreds and hundreds of pages, and then they've looked for patterns and found these alleged patterns.

Are you ready? So, the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. So, you've got the text, then one of the lines running down, so it's just all printed out, not with any spaces between the words or the sentences or anything like that. So, from the top down, you have I, so for Indira, Gandhi, it's straight down in a row, and then across the bloody deed.

Wow! So, straight down, I, Gandhi, and across the bloody deed. And, of course, she was killed, assassinated October 31st, 1984. The next example they give is the assassination of President Rene Mowad, and that one's a little bit more detailed, so I'm not going to try to go through that, but the more detailed, the more amazing, right? And then, how about, there's the assassination of Leon Trotsky, how about the assassination of Martin Luther King, which was April 4th, 1968? And you have, running diagonally down, some of the letters T, E, N, N, state were took place, and then from bottom going up, intersecting letters M, L, King, right?

And then, straight across, also intersecting with the King, to be killed by them, and then at the bottom, going across, prepare for death. This is all in one page of text, alright? And they have other examples as well.

I mean, if you didn't know anybody, you'd think this is amazing. The assassin Sirhan Sirhan, you know, sharp shooting, S Sirhan, and then again, S Sirhan, sharp shooting, you've got it occurring in several different places, it's quite extraordinary. They even have a complex one about Princess Di in Moby Dick, with multiple lines, this one running straight down, this one running side to side, this one running across. Now here's the deal, some of them are more persuasive than others, but all of them are just coincidence, because when you have enough text, and you just put all the letters side by side, and in Hebrew, you can do even more, because you don't have all the vowels, you have some letters that represent vowels, but you don't have all the vowels, so you've got more ambiguity than in an English text. But you find all these alleged assassinations prophesied, predicted Moby Dick, of course none of them were predicted Moby Dick, it's just happenstance that when you search things out enough, you can find out these alleged codes, and it's the same kind of thing, you know, this line going here, this line going there, this is what we discovered. So, I never put any stock in the Bible codes, I looked at it, I wondered if there's any truth to it, but I never put any stock at it, I didn't dismiss it 100% instantly, I listened to the arguments, tried to understand more. But number one, I knew that's not how God communicates, number two, it breaks down because of the ELS Sequency requires the same spelling throughout the history of the Hebrew Bible, and number three, you can find examples if you look for them in other large documents.

So, Bible codes, it's not a big current fad, but forget about it. We'll be right back with your calls. 866-3-4, Inc. 7884.

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?

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. You know, we are burdened to see a healthy church. We are burdened to see a healthy spirit, soul, and body. A healthy church begins with a healthy you. So do what you can to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus every day. Do what you can to renew your mind according to his truth. Do what you can to keep this physical temple healthy.

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Ask them, hey, so what does Dr. Brown recommend or what are the things that he uses? And they'll be glad to help you out with that. Or go to triveda.com. Make sure you use the code BROWN25 and then once you sign up regularly, be sure that you get all the benefits.

There's free membership that you get and points back to get discounts on future orders. So make sure you take advantage of those wellness benefits with our friends at Triveda. Yesterday I talked about dealing with hatred, dealing with lies, dealing with attack that comes your way, how we bless those who curse us, how we pray for those that lie about us. And then the need also for people to have their eyes and minds open spiritually. In other words, if you answer a question directly and someone says, how come you didn't answer my question? It's like, well, how can I answer it any more clearly? Brown, what is two plus two?

Two plus two equals four. Why won't you answer my questions? I just answered it. So you realize, okay, the words are not penetrating into the brain because there's a spiritual wall around, right? And the Bible talks about that, people being blinded. 2 Corinthians 4, 4, Satan's blind at the minds of those who don't believe. If you'd like to call, I'm going to go to the phones momentarily, 866-348-7884, any Jewish-related question of any kind.

But I was just reminded of this. I was looking at the most recent YouTube comment, and again yet another comment on my debate with Guerrilla Hebrew, and speaking about me, this guy has no scripts at all, meaning not using any scripture. So what I found really interesting with that is in my opening presentation I read scripture after scripture and referenced a number of scriptures. So probably in the opening presentation I either read directly, in some cases in our PowerPoint we put it up in Hebrew and in English. I started my major presentation with scripture, then more scripture, more scripture, and then I referenced other verses, I think nine or ten verses total. But several I put up in the Hebrew and English, and I read them and talked about them. And yet you constantly hear, Brian didn't use any scripture. You think, okay, so how do you get someone to see that?

And on the one hand, if you're sitting down together, I say, okay, well let's watch this. Is that scripture there? Is scripture here? Did I reference this?

Did I read this? Yeah, okay, well you said I had no scripture. So hopefully you can get someone to recognize, hey, I'm not actually hearing, I'm not actually seeing, because I'm blinded, because of my prejudices, or because you didn't do it the way I'm used to it being done. But you don't always have that time. You don't always have the ability to sit with people. But I want to encourage you to be patient.

I want to encourage you to keep trying. No one wants to have dialogue with you. As long as folks come to our website, even to ATTACK, they come to our YouTube channel even to ATTACK, I'm glad they're coming. Listen, we hear from religious Jews, I just saw a guy kind of want to tirade one YouTube video after another. Attacking me, attacking my beliefs in Jesus, attacking me as ignorant and deceptive, and all this stuff. And I won't debate any learned rabbis, and on and on. Of course, my door is open all the time. You're running from Toby Singer, I've actually been trying to do another debate with him for 30 years, and he's refused.

I mean, it's public knowledge. So, I'm glad he's there, though. I'm glad this individual's there. And as there's opportunity to interact with folks who differ with you, and to plant seeds.

Keep doing it. You never know. You never know when good fruit will come.

If someone's clearly not listening, not hearing, then there's a time to walk away and just pray for them. But as long as there's a door open, keep planting those seeds. 866-348-7884. Let's go to Atlanta, Georgia.

Wynn, welcome to the line of fire. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, thank you.

First, I'd like to say I've really benefited in my personal growth through your YouTube channel. But my question is, did Jews commonly believe that the Messiah will rebuild the temple? And I understand that there are prophecies in Isaiah that have come true through Jesus Christ's coming, and then future prophecies that haven't come true. Is there any Old Testament scripture that talks about this? Or is this from a non-biblical source?

No, it's biblical sources, and then expanded in rabbinic tradition. So, the biblical sources would be potentially Zechariah, the sixth chapter, that's speaking of the man who is the branch who will rebuild the temple. Now, some of that is understood to be Zerubbabel, who lived after the return from exile, and was involved in the rebuilding of the second temple.

So, some Jewish interpretation understands like that, but other Jewish interpretation understands it to be speaking of the Messiah to come in the future. So, Zechariah 6 would be one passage that's pointed to. Another would be Ezekiel 40 to 48, where you have this restored, renewed temple and Jerusalem, in fact everything expanded in major proportions. And it doesn't mention the Messiah by name there, it mentions a prince, some associate him with the Messiah. But since it's kind of a deductive thing, you have a third temple that seems to be spoken of in Ezekiel 40. You have, for example, Isaiah 2, all the nations flowing to Jerusalem, to the house of God, to the temple, to learn from the God of Israel. We know these things will happen in the Messianic era, and then we have other references to the Messiah building the temple, so that's how it kind of comes together. The most explicit reference is in Zechariah 6, and then this becomes fully codified with Moses Maimonides in the 12th century, who says explicitly that the Messiah will rebuild the temple.

This is one of the ways he'll be recognized. Now there are Jewish traditions that would say the temple's already made in heaven, and it will come down to earth when the Messiah is here, but many are expecting the Messiah to literally be the one, I don't mean with a hammer in hand, but to be the one who oversees the rebuilding of the temple. So it's a little scripture and then more tradition. Okay, thank you. You are very, very welcome.

866-34-TRUTH. Remember, for a traditional Jew, as one said to me, tradition is like another book of the Bible. That tradition carries tremendous weight, just like if you're Catholic, for example, that you put a lot of weight in the traditions of the church, and you freely interpret scripture through the traditions of the church. So the same thing for a rabbinic Jew. He or she would read the Bible through the lens of tradition, believing that the tradition has faithfully understood scripture, or faithfully interpreted scripture, or faithfully developed new laws and customs as would be appropriate for each age and era. So tradition is not looked at as a negative thing, as an enemy, but rather rabbinic Judaism is also called traditional Judaism. Just like a Catholic Christian or a Greek Orthodox Christian would look at their church traditions as carrying weight and authority because of the inspiration in the church leaders, so it's not equal to scripture, but it goes side by side with scripture. So in rabbinic Judaism, tradition and scripture are like hand in a glove. Alright, 866-34-TRUTH.

We come back. I'm going to tell you about this stack of books that's on my desk and why it's here. And then, Joe, I want to get to your question shortly after we come back about Martin Luther.

Was Martin Luther anti-Semitic? If you'd like to call, this is a great time, as long as it's Jewish related. 866-348-7884. That is the number to call. Hey, friends, this is Dr. Michael Brown.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, friends. We are very, very active in a major project that will be the most important Jewish outreach project of our lives. I've been working on it for many months now with the team, and we've got many months ahead. But as we get closer to when we're ready to get it out, we'll tell you about it. But spending a ton of time and effort in it, and by God's grace, it's going to be an amazing, amazing tool for the church and for the Jewish community.

So, more about that, oh, some months down the line. But thank you, all of you who pray for us and support us as we reach out to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. Thank you so much. Again, remember to call 866-34-TRUTH. Okay, so I've got a stack of books here on my right, so those watching on YouTube or Facebook can actually see the stack of books.

And it's from some of my library, which is in my office right across from the studio, literally 10 feet across from the studio. I've got some of my library there, and it's some of from my Semitic's library. I answered a call a few weeks ago explaining that there's no such name as Yahshua, that if you have the divine element at the beginning of a name, it becomes Yeho, right, so Yehoshaphat, so Jehoshaphat, a name like that. Some can even be shortened to Yo, like Yoshia, Josiah. But it's never Yah at the beginning of a Hebrew name when it's the divine element. So, Yehoshua, that's Joshua, then gets shortened to Yeshua. So, we know Jesus' name in Hebrew, Aramaic, was Yeshua. And that was explained at the end of names. It would be Yahu, like Eliyahu, Elijah, or Chizkiyahu, Hezekiah. Or it could be shortened to Yah, Chizkiyahu, instead of Chizkiyahu.

But I dug into names. They're called theophoric onomastica. Onomastica is lists of names. Theophoric means containing the divine element. So, theophoric, containing the divine element. In my doctoral dissertation, which I finished in 1985, on the Hebrew root Rafah, in the Hebrew Bible in the ancient Near East. In my doctoral dissertation, I devoted a whole chapter to theophoric onomastica, with the Rafah element in it, to see what we could learn about beliefs, about deities' healing, and how widely pervasive was that, and was this root used.

So, over the years, I got a bunch of books on Hebrew names. So, if you actually want to study this, instead of, No, it has to be Yah, it has to be this, it has to be Yah, it has to be Yahuah, whatever the latest fad is. Just because you say it, just because you repeat it, doesn't mean it's true. You can repeat it till the cows come home.

You can repeat it till the cows never come home. It doesn't make it true, alright? I'm just telling you how these things work in Hebrew.

It's not like, you have your opinion, I have my opinion. It's not opinion, no, we have the record from the Hebrew Bible, and from other inscriptions and things like this. But if you want to study the subject, so let's see. There's the classic book by the German scholar Martin Notte, So, the Israelite personal names, ancient personal names in light of the Semitic name collections in general. Then, there is the book by Mohammad Morachten, So, the Semitic personal names in old and imperial Aramaic inscriptions from the Near East. Then, there is the big book by Frank Benz, personal names in the Phoenician and Punic inscriptions.

Yeah, you want to read that. Then, you want to get the book by Frauke Grundl, the personal names in the text of Ugarit. So, personal names in the text from ancient Ugarit, modern day Rosh Shomer in Syria. Then, of course, you want to get the book by Jean D. Fowler, Theophoric Names in Ancient Hebrew, a comparative study. Then, you want to also check out, to be comprehensive, Scott C. Layton's book, Archaic Features of Canaanite Personal Names in the Hebrew Bible.

Then, of course, you want to read carefully for the larger data of the famous volume by Harry Huffman, Aramite Personal Names in the Mari text, so getting into some of the Akkadian there, and then focusing on Richard Hess's book on Amarna personal names. Yeah, so read through those books, sift through the data there, then come back and talk to me about your disagreements about some of the philological comments that I've made. Fair enough.

Set the playing field even there. Look, there are tons of subjects I won't debate because I'm not an expert in it, because I don't have expertise, I don't have history. I've read a few books on it, I've read some articles, listened to a few videos, but I'm not going to debate someone that's debated 20 or 30 years to studying a particular subject. Unless the thing is so completely bogus and ridiculous and asinine that in three seconds anyone with a working brain can refute it, there are plenty of subjects I won't debate. I won't even debate a Muslim about detailed Islamic issues. I have three years of classical Arabic, I have some knowledge of Islam, I'm conversant in many areas, but I'm not going to debate a Muslim about details of the Quran or specific Muslim beliefs, because I don't specialize in that. I can give a nice little presentation for a few minutes about God and creation and intelligent design, but I'm not going to debate some scientists, they'll demolish me.

Atheists and scientists will demolish me because I don't have background there. So, when you have some background and you study, it doesn't mean you're rightly understanding who God is, that we have to know Him spiritually, intellectually, but first and foremost spiritually by revelation and what's written in the Word. But areas where you say, look, I bring my car into the car mechanic, to the dealership, to work on, because that's what they do and they know how to do it.

And I'm smart enough to realize I don't know anything about cars, something doesn't feel right, bring it in for them to look at. So, we respect that in other areas and this is just a little glimpse of what goes into some of these discussions and subjects. So, I was looking for some other book today and spotted these on the shelf. I thought, oh, let me just bring them over across the hallway here. Okay, with that, we go to the phones and we start with Joe in Alexandria, Virginia. Welcome to the line of fire. Dr. Brown, how are you?

I'm doing well, thank you. So, me and my son Levi are both Messianic Jews and my son, he's like an informational sponge. He reads, he's read all the Lee Strobel books and he loves the Lord, he loves to learn. So, the other day we're going on a road trip and he says, Dad, why is Martin Luther so revered? He was a horrible racist and I don't understand, I just don't understand the whole thing. He told me a lot of the things he said and he printed things. I says, you know, son, I don't know, but I know someone who will know and that's why I'm calling you today.

Yes, sir. So, undoubtedly Martin Luther was used by God in amazing ways and what he took on in his day is something none of us can relate to because we don't have the same structure in our society where you basically had a church that was very much compromised apostate, but as the authority over regions that Luther was basically an outlaw because of his beliefs. So, we're not, you know, it's almost like someone in China taking on the entire Communist Party of China.

It's like, how are you going to stand against that? So, he had tremendous courage, it took a man with a backbone of unbelievable steel to do what he did and initially he was just trying to bring reformation to corruption that he saw within the Catholic Church and then realized that there were deeper problems than that. Some of his insights into scripture are amazing, some of his spiritual understanding is incredible. At the same time, there were areas in his life that were never crucified, areas of the flesh that were never crucified. And as he got older, these things and more powerful, these things became uglier. Now, his defenders would say, look, the worst things he wrote, he was old, he was sick. The fact is, he was vile in many ways. His words against the peasants and how they should be treated and slaughtered and cut into pieces and saying, yes, tens of thousands of them died, God commanded me to have them killed. The way he attacked his Catholic opponents, a lot of it was vile. So, it wasn't just the Jews he singled out. However, what he said about the Jewish people was so vile, so grotesque, mocking them as if they waited to see what was coming out of the anus of a pig so they could devour it.

I mean, just sicko kind of things. And ultimately, his book in 1543, which completely went the other direction of his gracious outreach to the Jewish people in 1523, his 1543 book went the completely opposite direction concerning the Jews and their lies. And he said that Jews should be consigned to ghettos, that they should be deprived of good jobs, that rabbis should be forbidden to teach on penalty of death, that synagogues and houses should be broken down and destroyed. And the Nazis implemented his strategy to a T. November 9th of 1938, Kristallnacht, which many historians say that's when the Holocaust really began, people said, no, no, you have to understand he wasn't anti-Semitic, he was anti-Jewish, that he heard that Jews cursed Christians every day in the synagogue and read blasphemous literature that some traditional Jews would read and spread. So, it was his problems with Judaism. Well, he definitely had a problem with Judaism and he was also misinformed about Judaism. However, he had an intrinsic problem with Jewish people as people. There are some of his writings where he actually talks about Jewish characteristics in evil and ugly ways. And even his fear, I mean, as I understand it, at the end of his life when he was dying, he thought he'd been poisoned by Jews.

So, he definitely had some ugly anti-Semitic views. What we should do is respect the good that God did through him. And even, you know, Charles Wesley and John Wesley, hearing Luther's writings, God used some of that to lead to their extraordinary conversions. The whole world of the church is different because of the positive ways he was used.

However, we must always have a caveat. We must always say, tragically, there were some terrible things that came through him. Tragically, there were some ugly things that are inexcusable. And that being said, the ugly things were pretty much pushed away or forgotten by centuries of Lutheran leaders. And many of them affirmed his 1523 book that Jesus Christ was born a Jew. It was the Nazis who revived the ugliest of it and the anti-Semites, the neo-Nazis to this day who quote the bad stuff. I've talked, Joe, to church historians, to professors at seminaries and asked them, when you teach church history, when do you teach about anti-Semitism in church history? And when do you teach about Luther's anti-Semitism? Joe, I've had them look at me with embarrassed expressions saying, actually, we don't. If you don't have my book, Our Hands Are Staying with Blood, the Tragic Story of the Church and the Jewish People, I strongly encourage you to get, maybe your son's already read it, Our Hands Are Staying with Blood, the Tragic Story of the Church and the Jewish People.

Make sure you get the 2019 updated edition. This is truth. This is something that just has to be acknowledged. And I find it interesting, I've had critics of the charismatic movement who love Luther, who praise Luther, who hail Luther. They look at him as one of the great reformers and they'll defend him for all this crazy stuff. And then the charismatic shakes and falls to the ground. You're a heretics. Like, hey, hey, I think you better even out those weights and measures a little.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thank you so much for joining us on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. Have you visited our Real Messiah website? No? RealMessiah.com. Check it out. RealMessiah.com. If you have our app, S. Dr. Brown Ministries, if not, you've got to download that first thing, download the app.

ASKDearBrown, S. Dr. Brown Ministries. Download the app. If you have the app, just scroll down right on the homepage, you'll see Real Messiah.

Click on that or go straight to RealMessiah.com. It's the go-to place to find answers to Jewish objections to Jesus, to watch whole unedited debates that I've had with rabbis, to – and there may be one where it's shortened in terms of taking out extraneous information, but all the debates there as they happen there. You've got our Jewish outreach TV show, Think It Through, that we did on the streets of New York and Beverly Hills and other places. It's fascinating stuff. Live interaction with people. All kinds of resources there for free.

For free. If you've got a Jewish friend with questions, send them to RealMessiah.com. All right, with that, we go to Michael in Cincinnati, Ohio. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Hello, Dr. Brown, thank you for having me on. You bet.

Hey, sir, just had a quick question for you. So, I got to see your video about where the gentleman called in asking about the proper name of our Lord, whether it's Yeshua or Yahshua, and I just heard you reference some books and I definitely want to get my hands on those. But when maybe having some conversations with family members, they brought up objections about the Yiddish language and how it's influenced the Hebrew language, and therefore they reject the Yeshua pronunciation of the Lord's name on that basis, and so they go with Yahshua.

I don't know if, you know, I'm sure the books touch on it. No, no, no, these books are going to be technical Semitic volumes that you would not want to bother with. Michael, I'm trying to trace where this lie started, that Yiddish somehow has influenced Hebrew or that Hebrew spoken today in Israel is Yiddish. I mean, I hear it constantly from Hebrew Israelites, but it's like I'm telling you you're actually speaking Japanese now. You're actually speaking Hungarian.

It's like, what in the world are you talking about? In fact, one show I'm actually going to say, okay, let's play someone reading from a Hebrew New Testament, all right? Let's get the Gospel of Matthew, the first verses. Now, let's listen to someone reading Yiddish New Testament, the first few verses. Yiddish is a Germanic language.

Yiddish, if someone's speaking fluent Yiddish, talking to a German person, they'll be able to converse on a certain level because they have a lot of words in common, right? For example, the Hebrew word for man is ish, okay, ish. The Yiddish word for man is mensch, which is the same as German.

All right, so the Hebrew word for God is elohim. The Yiddish word for God is got, just like in German. So, Yiddish is a Germanic language spoken by Jewish people in Europe, maybe going back a thousand years or so, and then it's spoken by a small number of Jews today, mainly very, very religious Jews. They still speak Yiddish, right?

That's one thing. Within Yiddish, because it's spoken by the Jewish people for centuries, some Hebrew words have come in. So, the word for thief in Hebrew is ganav.

In Yiddish, it's because a ganaf. So, it's a Hebrew word that comes into Yiddish, right? What Yiddish words come into Hebrew?

They don't, basically, because that's not the direction it wants. So, modern Hebrew, spoken in the land of Israel today, it's not Yiddish, it's not related to Yiddish. Yiddish is Germanic, Hebrew is Semitic. So, if you're speaking to, if you go to Israel today, you'll see signs, like street signs in English, in Hebrew and Arabic. If you go into an ultra-orthodox Jewish community, you'll see posters they have up in Yiddish, and if you're a Hebrew reader, you can't read it. You see what the letters are, but you can't read it or understand it. If all you know is Yiddish, and someone speaks to you in Hebrew, you can't understand it. They're two completely separate languages. So, when people talk about the Yiddish influence on Hebrew, all that is, is repeating an interlent lie, with no substance, no truth, no fact, whatsoever.

And when they say they're going to go with yah, yah doesn't do anything. If you want to go back 2,000 years, we can see 2,000 years ago, how the name Yeshua, Jesus, was pronounced in Hebrew and Aramaic. We have ways that we can look at it, several different ways that we can understand this, and then the manuscripts, the Hebrew manuscripts that have vowels saying Yeshua, they exist before Yiddish ever existed as a language.

They exist centuries before Yiddish existed as a language. And let me throw this out to you, and I've gone through this so many times, I don't mean this for your sake, I'm just saying for those listening, to know that we did the same myths over and over and over again, and no matter how much we present the facts, I'll look at YouTube comments, because our little response to the phone call has gotten, I don't know, maybe 40,000 views, and people say, No, it's Yeshua, it's Yah, it's like, no, no, it never was, but they're just going to keep shouting it. It's like, I'm going to close my eyes, I'm going to cover my ears, I'm going to keep shouting it out. So, here's what we do know, okay, if you go back to the Septuagint, that's the Greek translation of the Old Testament, right? Let's say you saw the place named Yavneh, so that's a yah sound at the beginning.

How is that written in Greek? It's iota, alpha, yah, yah, because it's telling you the sound was yah. When you go back to the name of Yeshua, how is that written?

Yay, yay, why? Because it was an eh sound. So, we know this, ancient Syriac, the same thing, this is a branch of Aramaic. You look back at how Yeshua's name was written, it was written with a yay sound at the beginning, not a yah sound. You look at other words that started with a yah sound, and they're written like that. And whenever you have the name of God at the beginning of a Hebrew name, and any Hebrew dictionary will show you, it will either come out as Yeho, like Yehoshua, Joshua, or Yo, like Yoshia, Josiah. It is never yah at the beginning.

Yahoo becomes Yeho, and that's how we have it. So, people are just spouting complete ignorance, and they're getting very passionate about it. I wouldn't care about someone mispronouncing it, if not for the fact that they make a big deal out of it, and then come up with this nonsense. So, my issue is when you present truth to someone.

Again, A, B, C, D, that's the English alphabet. No, you're a white Edomite devil, I can't trust you. Or you're a whatever. It's like, okay, well, what do you say to that?

How do you help someone with that? So, as I urged earlier, just use the experiment. Okay, I'm going to show you the evidence, right?

Line for line for line. And if someone still doesn't accept that, then you just step back and pray for them. I want to give you a quick illustration, Michael.

One of my best friends in the world, Scott Volk, many years ago, he's living in Phoenix, so he's in a time zone a few hours behind New York. He gets a call like six in the morning, and it's his grandfather. And he goes, yes, Walgreens, I'd like to get my prescription filled. And Scott's like, what? We'll come up and I'm like, what?

What's going on? He goes, grandpa, grandpa, it's six in the morning. He said, this is your grandson, Scott.

And his grandfather says, what are you doing at Walgreens? So, at that point, you think, okay, I think we're done. Does that make sense to you, sir? Yes, sir.

I really appreciate your help. Thank you so much, Dr. Brown. You are very welcome. Thank you.

I'm sorry to go on with this for so long. But this thing about, Brown, when you speak the Hebrew, it's Yiddish. No, I don't speak Yiddish. I had a year of Yiddish in college. My dad spoke Yiddish fluently. I don't speak Yiddish. I can read the letters and pronounce the words and make out a sentence here and there, but Hebrew is much closer to German. To the extent I know German better, to that extent, I know Yiddish better. To the extent I know Yiddish better, I know German better. All the Yiddish study in the world is not going to help you learn Hebrew because they are separate languages. I mean, I don't know how else to express it. You say, yeah, but modern Hebrew is influenced by Yiddish. No, modern Hebrew is not influenced by Yiddish.

Modern Hebrew has developed additional vocabulary, just like we have. Like, what's AI? That abbreviation, AI.

Okay, well, that's artificial intelligence. That's a new abbreviation because we have a new concept to cover. Or, what's a smartphone? There was a time when we didn't have a smartphone. There was a time when you were talking about web.

You were talking about like a spider's web. Now you have the web, et cetera. There was a time when we didn't have the word intranet. So, vocabulary grows. It's the same thing in modern Hebrew because biblical Hebrew is only so many words. Rabbinic Hebrew is so many words. So, they've had developed new words.

In Hebrew like every other language has, but what's that got to do with Yiddish? Nothing. Zero.

Zilch. So, again, a reminder, let's speak the truth in love and let's pray. Let's not get quarrelsome and attacking people. Let's go back, calm our spirits and say, Lord, people are hung up on so many peripheral things. People get worked up so many peripheral things and people have so many blinders over their eyes. Lord, just like you had mercy on us and reached out to us in our ignorance and our unbelief and our foolishness, show that same mercy to others and give them a spirit of repentance.

They can come to the knowledge of the truth. All right, hey, phone lines will be open the entire show tomorrow. Those of you that stuck on hold, we couldn't get to. If you're able to call tomorrow, we'll do our best to push you up on our list. Remember to download the app. If you don't have it, ask Dr. Brown Ministries, ASK Dear Brown Ministries, and then give it a good review if you're enjoying it and tell your friends about it.