Enough with the Crazy Rapture Prophecies

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Can we stop already with these crazy rapture prophecies? It's time for the line of fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the line of fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Joining us on the line of fire, this is Michael Brown. Here's the phone number 866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-87884. Anything you want to talk to me about, any subject that relates to the line of fire, I will take some calls today. Major news from Israel, even though it's not Thoroughly Jewish Thursday, we'll get to that major news from Israel as well. But first, I want to revisit this idea of prophecies about the rapture.

I recently did an entire show. Well, I did a good part of a show interacting with a video that's been viewed over 1.8 million times on YouTube, which claimed that from the first word of Genesis, from the word bereshit in Hebrew, beit, reish, shin, yud, taf. So from the five, excuse me, beit, reish, alef, shin, yud, taf. So from the six letters of the first word of Genesis, that from there you could deduce that Jesus was going to return and rapture the church no later than 2023. Of course, the whole thing's bogus. Everything about it was bogus. The use of the Hebrew was bogus. What was deduced from it was bogus.

It was all completely, entirely, 100 percent bogus. If you want to go back a few weeks, just look on our archives at AskDrBrown.org or on our YouTube channel, AskDrBrown, and just search for first word or first word of the Bible and we get into it. We debunk it there. But I want to revisit the larger question. I've got an article I'm just pulling up on my screen. You can find it on our website now, AskDrBrown.org, AskDrBrown.org, or you can find it on the app, Ask Dr. Brown Ministries app.

Just click on latest articles. It's called Enough With These Crazy Rapture Prophecies. I want to hit this historically.

I want to hit this practically. I do not personally believe in a pre-trib rapture, a secret rapture where any second Jesus takes us out of here and then we're with him seven years in heaven, tribulation on the earth, and we return with him after the tribulation. I personally don't believe in a pre-trib rapture, but that's not my big issue here. I have colleagues and friends who believe in a pre-trib rapture. I was saved in the church that believed in a pre-trib rapture. Some of the finest Christians on the earth today believe in a pre-trib rapture. So that's not my issue. I'm happy to talk with you about it.

I'm happy to explain why I believe what I believe. Craig Keener and I, Professor Craig Keener and I wrote a book together, Not Afraid of the Antichrist, Why We Don't Believe in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture. But that's not my big issue here. My big issue is the prophecies, the predictions about the return of Jesus. Like I said, I want to address this historically. Go back and think about this a little bit. And I want to address this practically.

That's my biggest point, practically. Yes, I responded to that one video that was put out and there's an accompanying e-book that came out with it as well. But I'm hearing more people say, oh, yeah, the rapture could be in 2023 or Jesus could be coming by the end of this year. I'm hearing more talk about it in certain circles.

Maybe you're not, but I'm hearing the buzz out there. I just thought, you know, let me just address this head on. If I'm going to be your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity, you better believe we have to tackle subjects like this. OK, so I came to faith end of 1971. And the big best selling book back then was Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. And God did use that book to make people realize that the Bible was God's word, that it spoke in relevant ways to us in this day, that we shouldn't be complacent, that the end of the world was upon us. It was used, I actually know people that came to faith through the book and their believers all these years later.

On the other hand, the date setting, the prophetic fulfillments that were allegedly unfolding, many of them proved to be not true, not accurate as the years went on. So I used to joke in the 1970s, as I began to grow in the Lord and look at some of these things, I used to joke that somebody is going to write a book called Jesus is Coming Back in the 1970s. And then a few years later, they put out the second revised edition, Jesus is Coming Back in the 1980s. And then a few years after that, they put out yet another revised edition, Jesus is Coming Back in the 1990s. I used to joke about that.

OK, so some of you will remember this. January 1st, 1988, Edgar Wasn'tent, who was a former NASA engineer. The one thing I'm not sure about is how to pronounce his name.

Was it Wasn'tent or Wasn'tent? Former NASA engineer. He published January 1st, 1988. Some of you old enough to remember this. 88 reasons why the rapture will be in 1988.

Yes, some of you are nodding at me as you're listening. Dr. Brown, I remember that. Maybe some of you took it very, very seriously. The book sold like hotcakes. It was given away to ministers, hundreds of thousands of books distributed. It's going to happen.

This is it. Eighty eight reasons laid out and churches had rapture practice. I mean, they joked, though, but they jumped up and down to get ready for the rapture. And some people foolishly said, hey, we spent all the money we want. We can fall into all kinds of debt and leave the debt for the Antichrist.

Well, they left the debt for the collection agency is what happened. It was tragic. And someone asked me, Mike, you're going to read that book? A friend of mine, I said on September 13th because he predicted the return of Jesus on September 12th. I thought no one knows the day or the hour. Well, somehow he predicted the return on September 12th. I said, I'll read it September 13th, 1988 with a smile.

In other words, I'm not going to need to read the book because it's not going to come to pass. Well, here's here's the sadder part. Here's the sadder part.

And I kid you not. Some of you remember this as well. What happens January 1st, 1989? So the rapture did not take place in 1988.

All right. We know that because we're all still here. The rapture did not take place in 1988. So what happens January 1st, 1989? He publishes the final shout Rapture Report 1989. He explained why he was off by one year.

He had miscalculated by one year. So now here are the 89 reasons Jesus is coming in 1989. And then in 1990, put out the final shout Rapture Report 1990.

And then 1991. Oh, I'm not making this up. He kept revising the dates and people, obviously, smaller and smaller numbers diminishing returns, right? Smaller and smaller numbers of people believing him. But he continued to put this out for years.

It made my joke a sad reality. Then Harold Camping. He had a large radio network that on the one hand, you could flip it on and hear the Bible being read in King James. But the Bible being read through the day.

That was a nice thing to be able to hear. And he had different teachers on. He himself would answer questions and teach from the Bible. And it was some of the strangest stuff I ever heard. Some really weird doctrines. And then at a certain point, a call to all Christians to leave the churches because the churches were of the wrong system.

So there's some dangerous stuff as well. But he had a big following. Harold Camping predicted, you just check Wikipedia.

This is accurate. He first predicted that the Judgment Day would occur on or about September 6, 1994. When it failed to occur, he revised the date to September 29 and then to October 2nd in 2005. Camping predicted the second coming of Christ would be May 21st, 2011, whereupon the saved would be taken up to heaven in the rapture.

And that, quote, there would follow five months of fire, brimstone and plagues on earth, with millions of people dying each day, culminating on October 21st, 2011, with the final destruction of the world. I remember being in New York City and seeing very, very sincere people. They didn't seem demented.

You could look them in the eyes and talk to them. Very, very sincere people holding signs, handing out literature, explaining this. It came to popular attention. So this became widely reported, this prophecy. And of course, it didn't happen.

Camping at this point was, what, around 90 years old. So, you know, when the whole thing didn't happen, just when it didn't happen, the second coming didn't happen, he would go, I don't know. You had to pity the man.

I don't know what happened and wrong somehow. And then a couple of years after that, he was gone. You think, OK, haven't we learned our lesson by now? Haven't we learned that all this date setting, and I'm just giving a few of the most prominent examples from the last 30, 40 years.

You go back in history, you see it over and over and over. Haven't we realized that all the date setting is vain? Haven't we realized that all the date setting allegedly through hints in the Bible, we're going to decode this.

It's silly. God speaks in plain language. Yes, there are prophecies that are mysterious in their language. But if we need to know what we're supposed to do today, God will not communicate in mysteries, he'll communicate with clarity. If you're in a life and death situation in the service of the Lord and earnestly trying to understand his will and you say, Lord, I need to know, should I go left or right? My family's well-being depends on it.

Would you show me if I need to go left and right? He's not going to give you a prophetic word and the color blue is like the mystical sea, which on a beautiful day seems like the beautiful sun shining down on the water, which glistens in the eyes. I don't know what that means, Lord.

I need something practical. He'll give us practical wisdom, he says in his word, going through trial and test, if we lack wisdom. And Jacob changed the first chapter to ask and he gives it liberally. The point I'm making is, when you look at what the New Testament teaches about the second coming, it's not impractical. It's not abstract.

It's not date setting. The emphasis is on the what more than the when. The emphasis is that we should live a certain way today so that we'll be ready for tomorrow. The emphasis is to recognize the brevity of life and to make it count because of what will happen in eternity and how we will become like him, glorified in eternity, and we will stand before him and give account.

Therefore, how should we live today? That's what the New Testament emphasizes, and to occupy, to be busy doing his work until he comes and to have an urgency to reach this dying world. It's nowhere taught that it's out of the blue for the righteous, for the believer, that out of the blue, we're just gone.

It's gone about our business, but just gone. Whether you believe in a preacher of rapture or not, what's clear, 1 Thessalonians 5, is for those of us who are children of God and live as children of God, we're not asleep in the light. We are children of God living in the day, in the daytime. Therefore, he will not come like a thief in the night because we're not in the night, we're in the day. So I want to address that on the other side of the break, then I'll take some of your calls, 866-342. But please, enough to try to predict the exact date of the Lord's return. Instead the question is Lord, how should we live today?

I think we honor you today. That's the big question, I'll be right back. 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 percent 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 percent.

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Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for joining us today. You know, on the health end, it's our burden to see a healthy church, spirit, soul, body. That means it starts with a healthy you. And so many times we put all of our emphasis on spiritual health, which is the number one health, but neglect our physical health because of which we can't do everything God calls us to do, things we want to do, things that we would enjoy doing. That's why we've partnered with TriVita with their great wellness supplements. Nancy and I were just chatting about this over the weekend about nitric oxide and about the importance that it has in our bodies, but the older we get, the less of it we manufacture. So I'm telling you my own routine today. Since the show's over, I'm going to mix together nitric oxide and myo health for our TriVita partners. I'm going to drink the water as I go home and a bottle of water, drink it and then get home and hit a nice, intense, heavy workout. Yeah, benefiting by replenishing these things in my system.

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Eight, six, six, three, four, eight, seven, eight, eight, four. I want to talk to I want to speak to you practically, not so much theologically and not not so much say, well, as a student of scripture, I can argue this point at that point, which, of course, has its place. And I am a student of scripture, as many of you are. But just practically, as I understand the nature of God, there is there is a progression to what he does. He doesn't just jump from A to Z. He takes his people point by point, step by step over a period of centuries.

He teaches, he trains. Look at the history of Old Testament Israel. So much of what happened, so much of what Israel went through over two thousand year period from the calling of Abraham to the coming of the Messiah. So much of that was in order to have a people ready for the Messiah to come.

And he comes in the fullness of time. And also at that time in the world, you've got Greek, such a widely used language, so this message can go widely around the world. More simply, you've got the Roman Empire and the roads and things have developed.

It's easier to travel with the message. The Jewish people have been brought to a certain point. We've got this remnant ready to receive the message and take it to the world. Even in the life and ministry of Jesus, it grows.

It grows. He gives warnings. He talks about what's coming.

His death is he prepares, gets closer, even though the disciples are still not ready when it happens that they were getting ready to get ready. And after he rises from the dead, they're ready to take the next step. There's a progression, just like when you meet someone the first time, maybe you didn't even notice this person in the room, but then you start to notice them. And then you realize you're kind of friendly and then you realize you're attracted to them and then you develop a relationship. And then if God's in it, you get married and spend the rest of your lives together.

This is the way it goes. You're raising a child. The child doesn't go from from birth to 18 overnight.

So in the same way, I look at the world and I look at how much of the task still remains, the Great Commission. Two billion, maybe three billion people on the planet have never heard the name of Jesus. Let alone had a conception of who he is and what he did and why he died on the cross and our need for God because of sin. They've not heard that message explicitly. They may recognize something's wrong in their lives, but you could talk to them about Jesus, they could say, I don't know him. Maybe he lives down the street or I never heard of that place.

Where is that? In other words, it's just if you have you said it to them in a way that was understandable in the language, they still they don't know what the sounds mean. God's not just going to suddenly take us out when that's the case. When Jesus prayed for our unity and we are so deeply divided on so many points, when there's so many areas where we have to grow into who Jesus calls us to be and intends us to be, as I read the word and as I read about signs that would precede his coming or warnings or things in the world, I don't see us as anywhere near the point of his return. Now, things could turn quickly, right? And acceleration could come in so many ways.

And suddenly what would only take 30 years could happen in three years. I welcome that. So be it. But we will know as we're getting closer, it will be clear. It will be obvious that we're getting closer to the end as opposed to we're just gone. I don't see that scripturally.

I don't see that in the nature of God. And certainly none of us have a guarantee on breathing and being alive tomorrow. So many of us have experienced that, the sudden loss of a loved one. You're with them one hour, the next hour, they're gone. And you had no premonition. You had no notion that it was about to happen.

You thought, oh, if I only knew I would have spent the time differently or things like that, that can happen in life and suddenly it's over. So in that sense, we're always ready to meet the Lord. Because remember, every generation that has lived and died up to now has lived and died without seeing Jesus return. So that's been 100 percent thus far. They have all died and they have not seen Jesus return.

So if I'm a betting man, well, death is certain. Seeing Jesus return in my lifetime, that's the great hope. That's the great goal. That's the great desire. That's what I live for and long for is to see him face to face as he returns, as we complete the work he's given us to do on the earth.

That's what I long to see. But if not, by God's grace, I plan to run my race so as to win meaning to whatever God has called me to do with excellence, with zeal, with vitality, with sincerity, with passion, leaning on him, entrusting in him, relying on his grace, that my desire then is to do everything to honor and please him. So on that day, he'll say, well done, good and faithful servant.

So I'm not doing this to get him to like me or to get him to love me or to work harder to be forgiven, though it's because I'm forgiven, because he loves me, because of his grace towards me. That's my joy with all my might and heart, soul and strength to say, Lord, here I am, send me, use me to reach as many as I can. I mean, many you feel you can you feel the passion in my voice as I speak. I live for this day and night to see my Jewish people saved, to see the church healthy and thriving, to see a gospel based moral and cultural revolution in America, to see the good news go to the ends of the earth. I burn for this day and night and want to see ultimately that we fulfill the mission and usher in the return of Jesus. But if not, I'm going to get to the end of my mission and then hand the baton to the next generation.

And they may hand it to the next, hand it to the next. So either way, I'm living with passion and living every day in the fear and reverence of God, because we could go to be with him at any moment. Plus, I love him and respect him and don't want to play games with his goodness and his grace.

But this idea that during radio in the middle of a show and you're driving your car and changing a diaper and and sitting type of way at your computer and practicing on the field and put, we're just out of here. No, I don't see that. I don't see that scripture. Even if you believe in a preacher rapture, I believe things will build in such a way that we will know. So please, enough, enough, enough with these crazy prophecies, especially ones with all respect to the brother who put these together. Maybe he's a very serious believer. I'm assuming a brother.

I just see initials with the name. But assuming that this person is a serious believer and doing this because this is they're sincerely wrong. The use of the Hebrew is an abuse of the Hebrew.

It is such a serious misuse that it is an abuse of God's word, an abuse of the text. And to try to come up with these dates, shouldn't we recognize everybody's got it wrong thus far? So let's quit with the date setting and let's live for God. And here's how you do it.

Live as if you have the rest of your life to live with a multigenerational mentality and live as if you could meet the Lord at any moment, those are realities. OK, we come back. I'm going to your phones. And then I do want to comment on the big news from Israel today.

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Click on Donate Monthly Support. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, get on the line of fire by calling eight six six three four. For truth. Here again, is Dr. Michael Brown. On the line of fire, eight six six three four eight seven eight eight four. Let's go to Brian in Louisville, Kentucky. Welcome to the line of fire.

Yeah, thanks for having me on again, Dr. Brown, appreciate it. Just had a quick question talking with some friends of mine. I'm a longtime believer and I've kind of had left the faith for a few years, but I'm slowly reentering. I had one question because I also come from a Jewish background. I know that, you know, neither testament explicitly has the word Trinity in it, but we get a clearer picture of the Trinity in the New Testament and then the old it's kind of more just, you know, subtle hints and then the new we get a really clear picture.

Just your opinion. What what do you think caused God to want to wait to give the clear picture of the Trinity as opposed to maybe telling Adam from the get go that there was a Trinity, right? Well, the first thing is we can't get a clear picture until the Son of God comes into the world, so until that time comes, it's going to be more abstract. And it's it's it's most important for us to understand God's triunity on a practical level.

In other words, it's not just theoretical information. God is not going to download into Adam. By the way, I am this. I am that in terms of my triune nature. I don't know that that would have meaning. But when the sun now comes into the world, now we need to understand this. OK, you're you're in some sense God, but you're a human being. Then is there nobody? So you came down from heaven?

Yes, but my father's still there. What does that mean? I'm going to leave, but my spirit's going to work among you. What does that actually mean? So the reason that we understand God's triune nature is not just abstract theological information, but it's practical. It helps us to understand who Jesus was and is, what he accomplished for us, how we relate to it, and how God can be God in heaven and God on the earth at the same time. So things that are opened up in the Hebrew Bible now become much more clear.

That's one thing. A second thing is that on a practical level now, it helps me to know how to relate now that the sun is coming to the world. So I relate to God the Father a certain way, the source of everything, the one that we're instructed to pray to as Father.

Jesus, I relate to it in a different way, as Savior and Lord and my best friend and the spirit I relate to in a way in terms of his hidden internal work that I walk with on a daily basis. So it's pragmatic and it fills in a lot of the blanks for us. And it answers questions that will inevitably ask once Jesus comes into the world. And in the Hebrew Bible, it's not as necessary to reveal all that. And bear in mind that even a clear revelation of Satan does not come until later in the Old Testament period.

And there's not an explicit reference. The Book of Job, although it tells an ancient story, is not written until much later in Israel's history. And whereas you have, for example, in 2 Samuel 24, 1, it says that the anger of the Lord incited David to number Israel. In 1 Chronicles 21, 1, it says that Satan incited David to number Israel.

So 1 Chronicles is several hundred years after 2 Samuel. And more importantly, it's written after the exile when idolatry was largely purged from ancient Israel. If you remember in 2 Kings 18, it says that Hezekiah had to chop up the bronze snake that was made in Numbers 21, Israelites called it nichushtan, which means bronze or a snake, they used to bow down to it and worship it.

And Hezekiah chopped it up. So if you give a revelation of this other being, Satan, who is powerful and does this and that, Israel would have worshiped the devil directly. So all that to say, God reveals things pragmatically, lays certain foundations, and perhaps in the idolatry of the ancient world and the polytheism of the ancient world, it was necessary for centuries and centuries to say there's only one God, there's only one God, there's only one God, there's only one God, there's only one God. Now, let's tell you more about this one God. So based on my limited understanding as a human being, those are some of the reasons that I see it the way I do.

That makes sense. Thank you so much. You are very welcome. 866-3-4-TRUTH. Let's go to Elizabeth in Texas. Welcome to the line of fire. Elizabeth. Yes, hello.

Go ahead, you're on the air. So what I'm wanting to know is, in what verses do the learned Jewish scholars stand on to say that the Messiah has not returned, because you said that the Torah, the first five books, are the same as the Bible that we read in the Christian faith? Well, the entire Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament of Christians, is the exact same books as the Hebrew Bible, the Bible for traditional Jews, except the order is different in some of the books. But it's the exact same books. Our Old Testament is identical to the Jewish Bible. Is the content the same?

Exactly. The content is exactly the same. Just the order of some of the books is different.

But the content is exactly the same. Then why don't they believe that Jesus has returned, that He is the Messiah? Yes, so what a Jewish person would say is that when the Messiah comes, there will be peace on the earth, there will be no more war. They would point to a passage like Isaiah 2, or a passage like Isaiah 11. They would say that the exiles will all be regathered, that the temple will be built in Jerusalem.

They would point to, say, Zechariah 14 or to Ezekiel 40 through 48. So they would say that when the Messiah comes, these things will happen. And because there's not yet peace on the earth, war has not yet been abolished. The knowledge of the glory of the Lord does not yet cover the earth, as the Lord has covered the seas.

The wolf is not lying down with the lamb or the lion with the ox. The Jewish people are still scattered in different parts of the world. The temple has still not been rebuilt.

The enemies of Israel have not been destroyed. Therefore, they would say, Jesus is not the Messiah. Of course, our whole argument is that we first had to come and suffer and die before he will rule and reign, but they don't agree with that. And therefore, they're just looking for him to come and rule and reign and establish his kingdom. So that sounds very much like the Second Coming. Is the idea that they will recognize him the second time? Ah, okay.

Right. So what we refer to as the Second Coming in many ways is what Jewish people are for. They're not looking for him to come in the clouds of heaven the way we are.

They're looking for him to be on the earth and then come to prominence and be recognized. But it is our fervent prayer and hope that leading up to the Second Coming, the Jewish people will recognize that the one they are praying for is actually the one who already came. And I do believe at the end of the age, there will be a national turning based on a number of passages in the New Testament and some in the Old Testament. That doesn't mean a Jewish person living today is guaranteed salvation.

If you just stick around long enough, you're guaranteed salvation. But yes, there will be many, many Jewish people who will recognize him at his Second Coming and will realize that the one that we rejected, the one that we thought was a cause of so many of our troubles, is actually the one who came to save us. So Jews, if you oversimplify it, are looking for the Messiah to do what many Christians expect him to do in the Second Coming. What we need to show a Jewish person today is based on the Hebrew Scriptures, he first had to come and suffer and die, and then there will be the Second Coming. Are there any standout features between what is described as the First Coming and the Second Coming, that in the Second Coming, the Jewish faith would reject because this isn't fulfilled or anything like that? No, no, it won't be that.

It would just be that it's Jesus, that it's Yeshua. That's going to be the issue. No, but in terms of everything that will happen, there'll be nothing unfulfilled at that point. Every last thing that we're expecting to see will happen at that point. So no, there'll be no basis for rejection on, well, this wasn't fulfilled and that wasn't fulfilled.

There'll be no basis on that. Let me encourage you, Elizabeth, to visit the Real Messiah website, that's realmessiah.com, realmessiah.com. Visit there, watch debates I've had with rabbis that are all free on the website, and that'll give you an idea. You'll see the give and take and you'll get a better understanding.

You'll hopefully have more of a burden to pray for the Jewish people. OK, on that note, before I go back to the phones, if you go over to Drudge Report, Drudge Report is a major news aggregator and it's widely used. If you went on it years past, a lot of the headlines you'd see there are things that Rush Limbaugh would be covering on the air. So it's a widely trafficked website.

And there on the home page, it's always going to be very dramatic and sensationalistic. In red, Israel on brink. There's a picture of large demonstrations, violent clashes, quote, only the beginning, Mossad chief warns, weak heart Bibi. So Prime Minister Netanyahu had a pacemaker put in over the weekend for shame. Exclamation point.

So what's happening? In Israel, the Supreme Court has tremendous power. It is self-appointed, meaning that it's not that the prime minister appoints or nominates people and then the Knesset, the parliament debates. Rather, the Supreme Court picks its own people.

So one's retiring, they pick another. The Supreme Court has been largely left leaning, liberal, quote, progressive. And Israel has no constitution. So how does the court make certain decisions? Well, they come up with the criterion of reasonableness.

And as one conservative politician says, yeah, the liberal positions are reasonable and the conservative positions are not reasonable. So the elected officials, the Knesset could vote and say, we're going to institute this new law and the Supreme Court could say, no, we find it not reasonable and strike it down. So Prime Minister Netanyahu's government has been pushing for judicial reforms.

There needs to be a balance. The problem is the government is so right leaning and some of the judicial reforms are so extreme that within Israel, patriots on both sides are saying, this is not healthy, this is not healthy. Even talking about potential civil war or military coup. I mean, the emotions are running very, very high. It's not the end of the world.

It's not the end of the world. But it's it's it's a critical time to be praying for Israel right now. And and basically the judicial reform that was passed over the weekend. It's the last minute compromise failed. So it was just Netanyahu's people voted and the other's boycotts of sixty four to zero instead of sixty four to fifty six. But this reform was a better one saying that that the Knesset can overturn something just deemed reasonable or unreasonable, that that they can push back against what the court did. However, the problems are with the other judicial firms are out there that the Supreme Court can come to a rumor and you can say just by majority of whites strike it down to all power. So the Knesset, there's no balance of power. So there needs to be some compromises along the way. It's a very volatile situation.

So the plan is praying for the peace and abuse of Israel right now. It's a critical time to do all that. Have you had a setback from an injury, accident or surgery that left you feeling weaker and a loss of strength? Or are you feeling the effects of aging and just don't feel like you have the stamina or energy you used to?

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Clint in Flint, Michigan. Welcome to the line of fire. Hey, can you hear me?

Yeah, I can. Hey, Dr. Brown, it's Clint, a big fan. I've been listening to you for years. I've been a Messianic for the last 10 years now. Great. I was raised in the... I'm sorry?

I said great. Yes, I was raised in the Messianic faith and they raised us with the rapture and everything. And I was going to ask you, isn't there more scriptural precedent for a second Exodus or maybe a greater Exodus, as some people like to call it, rather than a mass pre-tribulation rapture? What do you mean by a second Exodus? Well, the plethora of all the prophecies throughout the prophet, what the beginning of Deuteronomy 30 talks about, how God is going to regather all of his people from the four corners of the earth, mentioning both houses, Judah and Ephraim.

We know right now that the Jews have returned to Israel in 1948, but they're still praying for the ten tribes' return. And I was wondering, isn't there more scriptural precedent that we're going to have kind of a reenactment of the Exodus with the Antichrist kind of acting as the new sparrow? And do you see what I'm getting at?

Yeah, yeah. So two things. First, I don't see explicit words in terms of the Antichrist in that regard.

Here's what I do see. The regathering of the tribes of Israel from around the world continues. It's been going on at a more active level since the late 1800s.

And it continues. So for the first time, we now have more Jews living in Israel than outside of Israel, or at least more Jews living in Israel than any other one country. For years, America had the highest numbers. Of course, Russia had very high numbers.

So that continues. And among those scattered around the world are many from different tribes of Israel. In other words, among the Jewish people today, you have people who go back to different tribes. We know in the history books of the Old Testament that even during the days of northern Israel being separated, that many of the people from the northern tribes came down and relocated to live in the Kingdom of Judah. So among the Jewish people around the world, we have remnants of the 12 tribes.

Jacob James has written to them. This raised one five, right? No, I don't know that we can even set a number.

Honestly, I don't know that we can set a number. And certainly there are remnants of lost tribes in different parts of the world. It could be in Africa. There could be black Jews still hidden in Africa. There could be in certain Muslim parts of the world among the Palestinians, you know, different ones that have a historic identity that as we get closer to the end of the age, I expect to see that revealed even more.

But it could well be. I can't guarantee this, but as I understand scripture, it would seem to me that even when Yeshua returns that all Jewish people will not be back in the land at that time. And that's when there'll be a highway miraculously that will go into deserts and places and that the final remnant of these Jewish people and lost tribes scattered around the world will be brought back to the land after his return. So I see it continuing, continuing until his return. And then with that, the final regathering and the surviving peoples among the Gentile and Gentile nations literally carrying Jewish people back. So now it's happening more figuratively than even more literally.

So well, then I have a part two to that then. Yes, sure. My part two to that question would be we see this rise in Christians embracing the Torah and Jews accepting Yeshua as the Messiah. Now, I'm not talking bloodlines here, maybe from an archetypal standpoint, but could that possibly be a foreshadowing of the regathering of the reuniting of the two houses of Israel? Yeah.

As long as you say it's it's typological, it's it's arch, it's an archtype, as you say. In other words, just as Paul in Romans 11 takes a word that was given to in Romans 9, 10, 11 takes a word that was given to Israel. So you're no longer Israel, but you'll be Israel. You're no longer my people.

You'll be you'll be my people. So Israel in disobedience, then Israel back in obedience. He now applies it to the Gentiles, the ultimate people who will become the people. Now, he's not for a split second saying the Gentiles will become Israel. He's explicit there. As he goes on, he now writes to those Gentiles and says, I want you to provoke Israel to envy. He doesn't call them Israel. He says, I want you to provoke Israel to envy. So that is clear and that is explicit.

There's no doubt about that. But could the in-gathering of the Gentiles to join the Jewish people in a certain way, foreshadow the final regathering of the exiled tribes? Yeah, it could foreshadow it as long as we don't confuse it. And then you get Gentile Christians trying to find what tribe they're from and all this nonsense that I've watched over the years. We're going to reinstitute blood sacrifice.

It's like, oh, please, please. Yeah. And it's not even about bloodlines so much. I just see kind of a poetic similarity between Ephraim and Christianity as a whole with some of the weaknesses and blessings and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. That being said, there are some Messianic Jewish leaders whose goal is to convert Christians to Torah obedience and basically come out of the church.

I find it to be very dangerous. I've watched over the decades that these people lose their faith in Jesus entirely or that they become very legalistic or separatistic or proud. So it's not that at all. But the spiritual parallels here, the poetic. Yeah, I'm with you on that.

And it's some of the imagery that the New Testament draws on. Hey, Clint, thanks for being a faithful listener. Thank you so much, Dr. Brown. You bet. God bless.

866-348-7884. We journey up to Canada. Brad, welcome to the line of fire. Hello, Dr. Brown. Hey. I was wondering about Matthew 24, 21 and 22.

Okay. Word says, For then there shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, nor ever shall there be, and except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved, but for the elect's sake, those days shall be shortened. Now, if this great tribulation and the days are going to be shortened for the elect's sake, it don't say everyone. Where are the other ones at, the other people at this time? Well, everyone's here, but it's being short for the sake of the elect, because God's having compassion on his people. Yeah, but the days are shortened for the elect's sake, not everyone. Judgement's being poured out.

Okay. He's not changing time only for the elect, and everyone else is on standard time. What it means is that God's going to shorten the time of this intense period on the Earth for the sake of his own people. The Earth deserves these judgments. These judgments are being poured out on a disobedient, rebellious planet.

It's rightly deserved. But for the elect's sake, the time is shortened. So it's shortened for everybody, because we're all living here in this world together. You know, if God sped up the clock, if God sped up the pace of the plane that's flying, everyone's going to get there earlier.

He just did it for the sake of one passenger. But everyone's going to arrive earlier. So the time is shortened for everyone. But it's done out of compassion for the elect in the midst of it. The reason I'm saying it's shortened for the elect's sake is because of Revelation 13. But hang on, Brad, it doesn't say it's going to be shortened only for the elect. No, but it doesn't say it's going to be shortened for everyone. Yes, it does. Of course it does. It's for the sake of the elect.

The days of that tribulation period will be shortened. That's the plain sense of the words, Brad. OK, but then if you go to Revelation 13 and it says, any cause of all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a right American, a right hand near their forehead.

Yeah. If all means all there. It doesn't. He's going to make the e-ink for all, but many will die because they don't. Not everyone's going to obey. We know through Revelation, God puts a mark on those of his servants to keep them during the plagues.

You have to read through all of it. But many will die because many will refuse to bow down and will die. So he makes the edict that everyone has to do this, but not everyone's going to do it. We know that God's people will be here right through to the end. Hey, I appreciate the call.

I just want to encourage everyone as I look at the clock and run short on time here. Do your best not to try to dig out a mysterious new meaning of a text. And maybe you're the first one in the world to ever discover it. And no Greek scholars ever seen it. No Hebrew scholars ever seen it.

Probably you're wrong. I don't mean that God's word is not constantly giving us rich insights. But when people say, you know, the translators don't want us to know.

No, no, that's nonsense. I've been involved in Bible translations. And you're talking about people who spend years and years and decades working and painstakingly trying to understand. Maybe some cult group doesn't want you to understand. But you've got scores of Bible translations.

The reason they're out is people are trying to convey what they understand. Scripture says in the clearest way. And when you check, here's a Jewish translation, here's a Protestant translation, here's a Catholic translation, here's a this translation, here's an older translation, new translation. And they all say the same thing. There's not a conspiracy through the centuries to hide the truth. I mean, I see all these videos. Oh, it's frustrating.

They're viral. What the church doesn't want you to know, what the Bible translators don't want you to know. And the very point that allegedly people don't want you to know. It's a made up point. It's a manufactured point.

And it's not true. I watched one of these videos the other day. The guy started off, I mean, so Jesus said to exalt in the Lord, all honoring Yeshua and then just begins to put forth nonsense, historical factual nonsense. So I encourage you make the main thing the main thing.

Keep your eyes on the target. Let's honor the Lord. Let's live for him. Let's live a life that makes sense in the light of eternity. Let's bless God, let's bless our families, let's love our neighbors as ourselves. Let's shine through Jesus while we have death. Don't get caught up in the weeds. Just a friendly exercise. Kinetic, it's our world, they can never have it. This is how we rise up, it's our resistance, you can't resist us. Another program powered by the Truth Network.