Letting the Bible Speak for Itself

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network.

Can we just let the Bible speak for itself? 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. Friends, we are going to have a great eye opening show today.

Thanks for joining us on the broadcast. Here's a number to call with anything you want to talk to me about. If you want to differ with me on the things I'm raising today, if you have a question of any kind that relates in any way to The Line of Fire broadcast 866-34-TRUTH. 866-348-7884.

That is the number to call. Alright, I want to talk to you about the truth of Scripture today. I love the Word of God. I've been studying the Word of God for well over 50 years now, coming to faith at the end of 1971. There was a stretch in my life when I was a believer for about a year where I would read the word two hours every day and memorize Scripture. One hour a day used to memorize 20 verses a day. And I've written commentaries on Jeremiah, on Job, working on one on Isaiah.

Now, in a major project that has me digging into the Word so much on so many different levels. It's so rich, it's so amazing, it's so beautiful, it's so wise, it's so full of life, it's so redemptive, it's so transformative. I don't know why we can't simply let the Word of God speak for itself. The way God intended to communicate with us.

Not with secrets, not with codes, not with mystery messages. I talked yesterday about the latest nonsense prophecy that guaranteeing Jesus will return by the end of this year, 2023, and allegedly drawing this out of the letters from the first word of the first book of the Bible in Hebrew. Bereshit, the beginning of Genesis, it's just utter nonsense. It's actually an abuse of the Hebrew language and an abuse of Scripture. And I want to show you how God intended to speak.

I want to give you some very practical illustrations and then a few more prophecy updates. Alright? So, let's start here. I want to read a few headlines to you. Just go to the Fox News website and I'm going to read a headline to you.

Policy Immigration on Ruling with Administration Biden to Blow Major Deals Judge Federal. You say, what? I didn't understand that. Oh, oh, sorry, I read that backwards. Sorry about that, I read it in reverse order. Let's try another headline here.

DOJ of Federal to Fund Restrictions Read. You say, what? I'm not getting anything out of that. Oh, sorry, I skipped every other word. You say, well, what are you doing?

Why are you doing that? Just to make a point that people write things that they want you to understand. It's one thing if you get something in a secret code. You know, you and your friends are playing a game and you write in a certain code or the second letter of the alphabet represents this or the third, you know, whatever. And people have to figure it out or you put in little pictures and little things that you have to figure that out.

That's one thing. That's another thing when mom says, Johnny, get to your room now and make the bed. Well, I wonder what she meant.

I wonder when mommy said, Johnny, did she mean this Johnny or someone else? Get to your get to your room, make the bed. Did she want me to to to buy pieces of wood and make a bed? What does she want me? No, no, you know exactly what mommy meant.

She communicated clearly. We do this 24 seven every day of our lives. This is how we live. This is how we function. This is how we communicate. We interact with one another day in, day out. We use words and words have meanings and words are meant to be understood. This is how we this is how the human race functions in this world. This is what language is about. As you're listening to me right now, you are not using my words as directions to to get you where you're going. Where do you turn that?

No, I'm not giving you GPS directions. I'm talking to you about the Bible. When you're listening to some sports broadcast, you understand they're talking about sports. It is.

It's when you get the weather chattel, it's going to rage or OK, you you know what it means. Why do we make a difference with the Bible? Why do why do we forget that books were written to different people at different times about different circumstances, that one of the first things you learn when you do Bible study is you learn to ask, OK, do we know who wrote this? Do we know to whom they wrote it? Do we know when it was written? You better believe if you're reading a document that was written to the president of the United States during the Civil War, that that's going to have a very different context than if you're reading a document that was sent to President Biden today, because it's different presidents, it's different situations. And if people were talking about the conflict in our country today, well, the conflict in the country at one time is different than the conflict in the country of the other time.

Just common sense. Now, we don't always know exactly who wrote the book like we don't know who wrote the book of Job. And there's great debate among scholars as to when it was written. But the overall purpose of the book is clear enough as we read it, as we understand it, and we do it based on the words that were written.

Now, I've shared this before, but with so many new listeners and folks tuning in always for the first time, I want to tell you a little story about my own background. So when I came to faith, I had almost no background in the Bible. Even though I was raised Jewish, I had never read the Bible. I remember once opening up the Old Testament, the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, English translation. The Old Testament that I had, it was the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation version, which was the main English version that was available of a Jewish translation of the Old Testament, which, again, produces the Bible.

And I was given it when I was born in Mitzvah, and I remember I took it out, and I was going to read it one day. The Bible. It's like amazing, the Bible.

I read part of the first page and lost interest immediately. So now I come to faith, 1971, I start reading the Bible, and of course, King James Bible, that was the version that we had. That's what I read cover to cover about five times the first couple of years I was in the Lord. That's what I memorized from those thousands and thousands of verses. So I'm reading the King James, and remember, I'm brand new, and I know this is like God's Word and it's amazing, and the church where I've gotten saved is talking a lot about end time prophecy and the return of Jesus, and it's like a lot of amazing stuff in the Bible. So I start reading, and I notice as I'm reading, and you won't necessarily find this in an online version or an app, but if you actually have a written translation, King James, or some of the online ones, it will preserve the italics. So I'm reading in Genesis 1, and God saw the light that it was good. It's italicized it.

It was good. I thought, well, that's interesting, because italics, if you're reading in English, either means it's the title of a book or something like that you put in the italics, or it is emphasis. Right? So you're emphasizing the word by putting it in italics. You can use bold for that as well, right? But here is italics.

And God saw the light that it was good. I thought, that's an odd emphasis there, and I scroll down a little bit more. Not scroll down.

I read down the page. Verse 9, and God saw that the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear, and it was so. Dry land.

Hmm. Land. Why was that emphasized? Verse 10. And God called the dry land, earth, and then I keep reading, it's like, okay, verse 11, and fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind whose seed is in itself, I'm thinking, okay, this is not emphasis. This is not working.

Why are these words in italics? So I thought, oh, I got it. It's a code.

These translators of the Bible are so brilliant, so amazing, so inspiring, these translators are so smart. It's a secret code. And I'm the first one to discover it.

I actually, I'm brand new, 16 years old, brand new in the Lord, right, coming out of heavy drug use, LSD and heroin and the whole bit, smoking pot day and night, so maybe my mind was still getting renewed. It's a code that they put there, and I just discovered it. What was the code? Well, obviously, if you just read the words in italics, there is a hidden message, yeah. So I just read the words in italics, and I looked for the hidden message.

Let's see what we got here. It land, land, it was, and it, well, I realize, okay, there's no secret code, and I'm not the first one to discover it because it doesn't exist. Well, the truth be told, it was the King James way of saying that if a word is not there in the Hebrew or the Greek, but it is understood, then when we're translating into English, we'll put it in italics. So for example, if I say in Hebrew, hu ha'ish, that is, he is the man, but is is understood. You do not say it in Hebrew, in biblical Hebrew or modern Hebrew, you just say hu ha'ish, he is the man.

So the word is, is understood in Hebrew. Or for example, we have the indefinite article, a, or a, before a word, a tree, a boy. In Hebrew, if you're talking about a tree, you just say eights.

You're talking about a boy, you just say yell it. You don't say a in front of it. But in English, we have a and we have the. In Hebrew, you only have the. So if you've got a word, it could well be in King James, it's talking about something a boy, it will have a, potentially in italics. That's all it is.

And some translations, NASB carried that out as well, maybe some other modern translations. But that's all it was. There's no code. There's no code. Now I'm going to read something to you. Are you ready? Let's just pick a book from the Bible at random, Titus, Paul, the servant of God, the apostle of Jesus Christ, to further the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness and the hope of eternal life, which God who does not lie promised before the beginning of time and which now at his appointed season, he has brought to light through the preaching and trusted to me by the command of God, our savior to Titus, my true son of our common faith, grace and peace come from God, the father in Christ Jesus, our savior.

Now there's a lot of wonderful stuff to unpack there, right? What does it mean to be an apostle? What is the faith of God's elect? What is the truth of which we have knowledge? What does it mean to be godly? What is eternal life? I mean, all wonderful things to unpack here, the revelation that God does not lie.

What was the appointed season then for the Lord to be revealed? And who is Titus? But it's a letter. We all understand it's a letter that Paul wrote to Titus, let's read it like that. Why can't we let the Bible speak for itself?

Why must we find hidden coded meanings? The scriptures are rich enough and as you dig into the Hebrew and the Greek to further unfold what we get in our translations, it's beautiful, it's rich and wonderful. It's enough to keep us studying and thinking and growing and learning and experiencing for life. Let's let the word of God speak as God intended it to speak just as I'm speaking to you right now.

We'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 Triveda, 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%.

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All right 866-348-7884, I'm going to go to the phones shortly. If you missed yesterday's broadcast, I responded to this viral video that the Rapture will take place before the end of the year 2023. Even though I don't believe in a pre-trip Rapture, I'm quite sure that if there was going to be a pre-trip Rapture, it's not happening now in 2023 for quite a few reasons and you know God doesn't just completely do things totally out of the blue. There is a progression, there is a working of God, there is a warning, there is a preparation and that's how he's working with us towards a goal as his co-workers, as his children, as his servants and we who are not complacent, we who are not carousing, getting drunk and getting high, we who are seeking to be alive and awake, Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5 that that day will not overtake us as a thief because the thief comes in the night and we're children of the day.

We don't live in the night, we live in spiritual daytime. So I discussed that yesterday and then I tweeted out earlier today, no sooner do I put out some videos exposing the latest false prophecy craze, the Rapture will happen by the end of 2023 and someone writes me asking, have you seen the new video predicting the second coming in 2030 to which I said, enough already, let's focus on living for Jesus today. So I just searched out of curiosity, okay, let's see what comes up about second coming in 2030.

There may be other books, videos about it but this is what came out from a gentleman named Daniel Speck. He may love the Lord, may be devoted to Jesus and it's a book, 2030 Second Coming, 2023 Tribulation, 2016 Seven Years of Plenty. So through COVID, through times of inflation, I guess those were the seven years that we're in right now, the seven years of plenty with vast majority of Americans not happy with the direction of the economy, that's part of the seven years of plenty. Well this came out in 2014, so already the predictions were wrong, the 2023 Tribulation, 2030 Second Coming, there's a website that lays some of this out, why Jesus will return in the year 2030 based on a number of clues given in the scriptures, we can expect Jesus Christ to return in 2030. This stuff is so off, it's so wrong, it's so misguided, however sincere people may be, it is an absolute distraction that does no good whatsoever, it does no good whatsoever aside from the fact that the more predictions are out there, the more you can expect they're going to be false. Well no sooner were we talking about this as a team right before the show, one of our team members says, Dr. Brent how about this one, oh I missed this entirely, this came out in 2015 by David Netherton, The Rapture 2028, America's Countdown to Apocalypse, also The Rapture is not going to be 2023, the Second Coming 2030, The Rapture is actually going to be 2028. But you can even go to Wikipedia and search for predictions and claims for the Second Coming and you'll find this, let's see, the year 500 is predicted, different Christian theologians predicted that Jesus was returning in the year 500, one prediction was based on the dimensions of Noah's ark, there's a prediction that he was coming April 6th, 793, January 1st 1000, obviously the new millennium, 1260, 1370, 1504, February 20th 1524, then between 1524 and 1526, 1533, October 19th of that year, 1673, 1694, 1700, 1757, 1770, by another one, 1793 to 1795, 25th December 1814, and on and on it goes. William Miller's prediction, October 22nd 1844, in many ways the beginning of Seventh Day Adventism and Mormonism can go back to that as well, oh if you skip down a whole bunch of predictions in the 1800s, 1891 would be a specific one, Joseph Smith, ties him with Mormons, and then 1914, that was Jehovah's Witnesses when Jesus is returning, so they had to rewrite that and say well it was a spiritual return, and on and on it goes, Herbert Armstrong had 1935, 1943, 1972, 1975 predictions, and on and on it goes, suggested how Lindsay's Great Planet Earth, suggested but not absolutely, returning by 1988 because of 40 years through the establishment of the State of Israel, and so on and so forth, other dates right up to 2021 and now 2023 and 2028, 2023, enough, enough, enough already with this nonsense, the Bible is not giving us information to predict the day of Jesus' return, the Bible is giving us information to know how to live today, and the clearer the signs become around us in terms of what's happening in the world, then the clearer it is in terms of how we have to live, and remember, we may be experiencing one thing in America, and saying wow it's a Laodicean age and the Church of America is largely Laodicean, and as the Church of Laodicea said, I'm rich in Christian wealth in need of nothing, and Jesus said you're rich, you're pitiful, poor, blind, and naked, Revelation 3, well in other parts of the world it's like the church in Smyrna, where Jesus says I know your poverty and your afflictions yet you're rich, outwardly you don't have much but you're rich, so we can't even project what's happening here in Europe, all around the world, the bottom line is, when God gave Israel words of prophecy, it was to warn them of coming judgment so they'd get it, it was to give them encouragement to have hope in times of difficulty, it was to help them to know how to live today, that is the big question, and for me, I live with enough urgency knowing I only have one life, that's enough urgency for me, I burn with visions that would take multiple lifetimes to fulfill, so I burn to live it out myself, and then to reproduce disciples and to have a multigenerational mentality to see everything that God put in my heart fulfilled through my life and those that I can influence and impact, but the fact that I only have one life to repay my debt of gratitude to the Lord, the fact that I only have one life to run my race, the fact that what I do in this world is going to have eternal implications, that is more than enough incentive for me to live with urgency and to live with passion and to live with fervor and to live with focus, and all the date-setting, aside from being biblically erroneous and reading the scriptures wrongly, one colleague of mine tweeted the other day, you don't need to decode the answers to Christ, we're going to decode, no, there's nothing to decode, let's understand scripture, let's live with sobriety, and if we are living rightly today, we'll be ready for tomorrow. If we're living in the light today, then tomorrow will take care of itself as we walk in obedience to the Lord and as He Himself is a refuge in times of trouble, and when things reach a boiling point and there are life and death decisions we will need to make, we'll be ready to make them and it'll be clear as day that we have to make them. Just like when you're out and in the pouring rain, the rain starts to pour down, hey, you knew the weather was going to be bad, you're traveling with an umbrella, put that umbrella up and you will be shielded from the rain, we will be ready by God's grace, walk in obedience today, make your life count today, live with the excitement that one day we'll be with the Lord forever, that He's going to return and establish His kingdom and be glorified before the whole world. That's enough to keep me motivated, to keep me pushed, to keep me going.

The date setting is not only unbiblical, the date setting is not only wrong based on misinterpretation of scripture, but the date setting is a distraction. So no more need to send me requests, how about this date, how about that date, enough already with the date setting. With that friends, we will be right back on the other side of the break with your calls. If you appreciate what we're doing, want to stand with us, help us do each more, listen carefully to this special announcement, together friends, we're making a difference.

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But we go to the phones, starting with Jeremy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Thanks for holding. Welcome to the Line of Fire. Oh, hey, Dr. Brown.

Thank you so much for all the books you've written, too, like even Hypergrace has been very helpful, just so you know. But I had a big question for you. I have a lot of Reformed friends, of course, a lot of Calvinists that I talk to on a regular basis, and yet it's become such a practical issue or else I wouldn't make such a big deal about it. So how would you respond to somebody who says that salvation is 100% God and 0% us? And when they're not just talking about initial justification, they're talking about all of life kind of thing, like to get to heaven, it's such a big deal.

As far as like, I know the Bible says it speaks for itself, but how would you answer something like that? Right, and when I was a Calvinist, 77 to 82, I gloried in some of these things, you know, B.B. Warfield, quote, great New Testament scholar, something to the effect of if there remained one stitch in the garment of our salvation for us that we'd be eternally lost. And I'll see commonly someone said, if you could lose your salvation, we all would. So we agree, we all agree as followers of Jesus, our meaning in Calvinists, that Jesus is the author and the perfecter of our faith.

We all agree on that. We all agree that salvation is a gift from God and that at a trillion lifetimes, we could not save ourselves. I would ask, though, a Calvinist, okay, what do you do with the Lord urging us to strive to enter in in the straight gate? For example, Matthew 7 or Luke 13, what do you do with him telling you, put on the armor of God, Ephesians 6, 10 through 19, and pray with all prayers and supplication. What do you do with 1 Peter 5, 8 and 9, be sober, be vigilant, your adversary the devil goes about as the roaring Lord and seeking whom you may devour, resist him steadfast in the faith. What do you do with 1 Corinthians 9, 24 to 27, saying, run your race so as to win. And I would just say, what do you do with all these exhortations? What do you do with the words of Jesus in Matthew 9, to pray to the Lord of the harvest to thrust forth laborers into his harvest?

What do you do with those things? What if they say, well, God has determined that his means of saving the world is through my prayer and through my preaching, and therefore I feel this holy responsibility to do. Okay, so that's your participation.

What do you do? As Paul in 1 Corinthians 3 describes himself as a fellow worker with the Lord. Are we not fellow workers in his vineyard and harvest? Does he not work through us?

So everyone agrees there's human participation, obviously, even when the human being says it is 100% God, they are speaking words, they are participating, and if they're immersed in water, they did something even though salvation is God's work, that they did not save themselves by being dipped in water, but they participated. So ask them what that means. Ask them why some of the great evangelists like George Whitefield or missionaries like Adoniram Judson who were Calvinists were so driven and so consumed, and there's the famous Spurgeon quote to the effect, if someone goes to hell, let them be crawling over our bodies as we're holding onto their legs trying to stop them.

Just ask them, what do you do? Do you feel urgency? Do you feel a burden? Do you feel a responsibility? And all of the many commands and hyper-grace, I reference how many things God has called us to do in scripture as opposed to the hyper-grace mentality that God's just done it all and all you have to do is just receive it and believe it.

No, it gives us scores and actually hundreds of exhortations in the New Testament as to how to live and what to do and the earnestness with which we do it. So you tell the person, I don't care if it's 9 trillion percent God and 0 percent me minus 40 billion. I mean, what do I do with these verses?

Just be practical. Well, are you a synergist versus a monitist? I'm just asking you, forget theological terms, I'm just asking you a question. How do you respond?

What do you do with it? Now, I want to make a confession for me. I'm not saying this applies to the Calvinists. I am not making a judgment. God knows. I'm talking about me.

Okay. I know when I was a Calvinist, because in the church where I got saved it was very much against Calvinism and the idea that if you believe these things you'll become complacent and if you say God has predestined some people to heaven, then you won't have the urgency to share the gospel, et cetera. And of course, many Calvinists would say you become obsessed with it, you feel it all hangs on you and you're neurotic, so it can, the extremes on either side. But I was very careful to be sure that that never happened in my own life. I was going to demonstrate that that was not a consequence of Calvinism. I still remember where I was.

I was sitting in my home study with some of my academic books as I was working on my doctorate in Semitic languages in New York University. And I remember thinking to myself, maybe I shouldn't just be sitting here studying. Maybe I should go out in the community and do some evangelism.

Maybe look for someone to talk to or knock on some doors. And I remember distinctly saying to myself, but if they're going to be saved, they're going to be saved. I mean, worst case, I miss out on my reward, but if they're going to be saved, they're going to be saved. I remember thinking, that's a bad attitude, buddy. That's an unhealthy attitude. But I had to admit, for me, I'm not judging anybody else. I'm not saying this is how other Calvinists think. I'm just saying for me, that was a disturbing thought, because it was my theology that if they're going to be saved, they're going to be saved. And there's nothing I can do for it or against it.

It's going to happen either way. But I could lose some of my reward or the smile of God for being obedient, et cetera. But I can't influence that.

And I realized, okay, that's dangerous, buddy. That opens the door for complacency. And Charles Finney, one reason that he so reacted against the Calvinism of his day was because there were many who said, there's nothing you can do to bring revival. You don't even pray for it. It's sovereign. The same with salvation.

It's sovereign. And the Calvinists that I knew when I was a Calvinist, and Calvinists I know to this day, that's not their mentality. They believe in prayer. They believe in being the means through which God works. But honestly, I still can't see how you could burn with the same fire that I would burn with as a non-Calvinist as a Calvinist. I still don't see how it's going to be exactly the same, because ultimately of a theology that says God's going to do what he's going to do, they might respond saying, no, that's the whole thing that carries me.

He's going to do what he's going to do, but he's going to use me, and therefore I have my role to play. So be it. Burn brightly, Calvinist friends. Burn brightly.

Put me to shame. It was your zeal for the lost, your passion for prayer. Very, very long answer to you, Jeremy, but I just go through those verses and say, what do you do with this, and this, and this, and this, and this? And if they give you some— Okay, no, I appreciate that.

If they give you some— That helps. Human response meaning, well, God will operate his principles—no, no, no, no. What does that mean? What are you going to do with this when he calls you to pray, when he calls you to live your life like this and take up the—because what do you do with that on a daily basis? Well, God responds through me, okay, but you, the human being part, God's talking to you to respond.

What do you do with it? I keep pressing it until they either give you a bad theology or tell you, of course we respond. Of course we act.

Of course we have responsibility. All right? No, thank you.

That helps. Could I ask you just one other thing real quick? Yeah, oh, and by the way, ask them, say Romans 14, 12, what are we giving account for when we all stand before the judgment seat and give account as believers? What are we giving account for?

Okay, that's the only other thing I wanted to ask you that I thought, I've been waiting to talk to you so long. You personally were familiar with John Fletcher, who Wesley liked so much, but John Fletcher and the Methodists were big on that second justification of works, and they want to, the thing that kills me, they think that you're like a Catholic or a Mormon or something, but how do you explain that where, like do you believe in a second justification of works like when Jesus said, you know, by your words you'll be acquitted, by your words you'll be condemned? No, I don't, I don't believe, so Matthew 12, 36, 37, you just quoted, no, I wouldn't take that as a second justification by works, and if it's just a strict literal meaning ultimately instead of a larger context of how we live and what we profess, then we'd all be damned ultimately through words, but, no, we are stewards, so as God's people, as God's children, we will now give account, as in the many parables with the talents and things like that.

So it's not for salvation, the same with 2 Corinthians 5, 10, the judgment seat of Christ, it's not for salvation, it is stewardship, it is accountability, so whether it's rewards in a millennial kingdom or eternal rewards or all that can be debated, but there is accountability for our lives as children, not to determine whether we're in the faith or not, not to determine whether we're saved or not, but in terms of stewardship, it's an accountability of our lives because things have been entrusted to us, and therefore we live with a certain sobriety knowing that one day we'll give account to God, and we will, as believers, we thank you for the call. 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? Then MyoHealth might be an answer to your prayers. Backed by 24 human clinical studies and over $20 million in government-funded research, MyoHealth contains a perfect balance of all nine essential amino acids. With MyoHealth, you can rebuild your strength, improve your balance and mobility, have more energy while restoring your health and vitality, and start building new lean, stronger muscle in as little as 30 days. By combining MyoHealth with a healthy diet and regular exercise, you can feel stronger at any age, have more energy, and live a life with vitality. Put the power of MyoHealth to work for you. I started working out consistently for the first time in years, and I've lost 50 pounds. I've been lifting weights, I've been swimming, and then the muscle mass, that's what really surprises me.

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Get on the line of fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Here is the latest ridiculous headline, MSN.com. Men can't give birth. Transgender man proves transphobes wrong and gives birth to daughter. In quotes, men can't give birth. Transgender man proves transphobes wrong and gives birth to daughter. This is madness.

This is pitiful and pathetic madness. May God have mercy on this woman who now identifies as a man. This is a female. Only females conceive. Only females give birth. This is not transphobia saying that this is biological reality. You can identify as a male. You can take hormones so that you grow a beard, but unless you have a uterus, you will not be able to conceive and you will not be able to carry a baby and you will not be able to give birth to a baby. In fact, if you had surgery in a certain part of your body, you wouldn't be able to have the child even if you'd conceive a child before that. This is nonsense.

It was years ago, the so-called pregnant man, a man who identifies as a woman but didn't have quote bottom surgery. May God help these confused people and may more and more Americans continue to wake up to the cultural madness in which we live. Thankfully, it's happening. The gospel-based moral and cultural revolution of which we've spoken for years, the pushback of which we've spoken for years is here.

It's growing all over America. Let's just lead it on the front lines here as God's people and as crazy as this is, let's remember these are human beings. These are people created in God's image, many of them hurting, many have suffered a lot of rejection, many have gone through a lot of internal pain.

May God redeem them and make them whole. If that's you, I'm telling you, friend, there's a better way. There is a better way. 866-34-TRUTH.

Let's go to Cody in Centre County, Pennsylvania. Welcome to the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Brown, thank you so much for taking my call. First of all, God bless you in all that you do. Keep up the good fight, brother.

I have a quick question, and to save your time, I will take my answer off the air. I just wanted to get your opinion on Jeremiah 33 verse 3, where it says, Call to me, and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things. My question, does this apply to Christians today, or is this simply just a direct line to Jeremiah in the passage there? Thank you so much, God bless.

Thank you. So Jeremiah himself is confined at that point, and yet this wonderful word comes to him. So first and foremost, it is a word that God gave to Jeremiah at that specific time for him.

That being said, it is now part of the Bible, part of Israel's history, part of a prophetic message that continues to speak, and I believe that at any time, especially during crisis difficulty, God could cause those words to come alive to us. And Romans 15, 4 says, Whatever was written beforehand was written for our hope. So we, through the patient's comfort of the Scriptures, might endure and might persevere. So these things that were promises, be it a promise to this one in crisis, or that one in difficulty, or words of praise after breakthroughs, we can now spiritually apply these to our own lives as they fit. And it is in keeping with the character of God and the New Testament exhortations to ask and seek and knock with expectation and to recognize the greatness of the power of God within us, the end of Ephesians 3, able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think, let's say, yes, that was a promise to Jeremiah, but by all means, by all means, we can take hold of it for ourselves today, especially as the Holy Spirit quickens it to our lives. We're not taking it out of context. We are not butchering it. We are not misusing it. We're saying, here's what it meant then, and here's how, in that same way, the Holy Spirit can speak that word to us today.

All right, we go to TJ in Robertsdale, Alabama. Thanks also for holding. Welcome to the line of fire.

Hi, Dr. Brown, thank you so much for taking my call. I had a question that I have some Scriptures I wanted to read, and I'm just having trouble trying to figure out how to incorporate this into my faith. So the Scriptures are 1 Corinthians 8, verses 4 and 6. It says, there is no God but one, and then in verse 6 it says, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, so the one God is specifically called the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we exist, and there is but one Lord Jesus Christ. So in that passage, there's one God, the Father, he's separate from Jesus Christ, and in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 5 and 6, it says, there's one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all, and also in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 3, it says, praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that phrase is said over seven times in the New Testament that the current risen Christ, Jesus Christ, still has a God and a Father, he's the Father God. And so from these passages, I'm trying to understand how to integrate this, because I have to say what Scripture says, I have to say, there is one God, the Father, and I have to say that...

So let me help you here, because we only have limited time on the broadcast, I want to encourage you to go to my YouTube channel, AskDrBrown, A-S-K-D-R Brown, and just search for the word TUGGY, T-U-G-G-Y, T-U-G-G-Y, Dale Tuggy. You can watch the debate that I had with Dr. Tuggy about this very subject, is the Father alone God? So here's... So can I, before you answer, could I say something, because I believe I've seen that debate. The one thing I wanted to point out before I let you answer is, the debate you've had, anyone who believes that God alone is the Father that I've heard you debate, they don't believe in the pre-existence of Christ, and they don't believe in the pre-existence, and that the Holy Spirit is a separate self, I know the Bible says that Jesus was the Word, He pre-existed, and I know the Bible also says the Word was God, and I've been reading Irenaeus' Against Heresy, and he over and over says, the one God above all is the Father, and he made all things through the Word and the Spirit, and I know I don't have time to go into all that, but I just wanted to clarify, I do believe in the pre-existence of Christ, I do believe in the pre-existence of the Holy Spirit, and that they're separate individuals, I just, for me personally, I don't know how... I don't want to throw away scriptures, because they do, for me, as 1 Corinthians 8, chapter 6.

I appreciate the thoroughness of it. So here's what I know explicitly scripture states, it explicitly states the deity of Jesus in a number of passages, explicitly, undeniably, Thomas confesses Him as my Lord and my God, in John 20-28, it's explicit, John 1-1 is also explicit, the Word was God, that is the right way to understand the Greek, Hebrews 1, verse 8, to the Son, He says, your own, O God, is forever and ever, and then ends it with quoting from Psalm 102, in the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, it attributes creation to Him. In the book of Revelation, both the Father and Jesus are identified as the first and the last, the Alpha and the Omega. There are other Old Testament passages as well, so the Son is explicitly identified as God, as is the Spirit in the New Testament, lying to the Spirit is lying to God, and in fact, Hebrews 9 doesn't say the Spirit is pre-existent, but the eternal Spirit. So we have explicit statements in scripture as to the absolute deity of the Son, in fact, Jude says He's the only Lord, the only Lord, and we have explicit statements as to the eternal nature of the Holy Spirit, and even the deity of the Holy Spirit. So what we have to do now is, and do we have other gods? Are you to worship Jesus in the New Testament, yes, can you even pray to Jesus in the New Testament, yes, does that mean you have other gods before God?

If you believe that He's pre-existent and called God, and called the only Lord, and we are to worship Him, Revelation 5, all creation worships God and the Lamb with the same worship and adoration. So either we have other gods before God, or He is triune, and the Father is revealed, the primary revelation of the Father is as God within the Trinity, the primary revelation of the Son is as Lord, and the Spirit is revealed as Spirit. So 2 Corinthians 12, speaking of the one God, references God, Lord, and Spirit. So we have one God, among all the gods, there's only one, He is the Father. But what has Jesus told us in John 10, He and the Father are one, what has He told us in John 14, I'm in the Father, and the Father is human form. I agree with everything you just said, I guess my concern is with, it also seems like there's this explicit statement that there is one God, the Father.

Let's continue the conversation, I'm only interrupting because we're about to go off the air, but this merits a further call in a few weeks, so we can resume this conversation. I just want to say this though, based on your thinking, the Father is not Lord, correct? So I don't know, I'm honestly, I'm just trying to study the early Church Fathers, all this stuff, I honestly don't know. Okay, but you cannot possibly say the Father is not Lord, He's called Lord throughout the Old Testament, you cannot possibly say He's not Lord, that based on your reading that the Father is God, and the Son is Lord, then the Father is not Lord. You are reading more into the statements than the statements required, but you're giving prayerful thought, which I appreciate. So I'm going to jump in because of time, but a few weeks from now, God willing, we'll continue the conversation. God bless you.