The Truth About the Name Jehovah

The following is a pre-recorded program.

So, was Jehovah really God's original name? 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.

Hey friends, Michael Brown here. It is Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. I've written about this, I've talked about it in the past, but we're going to devote some real in-depth time on today's show to discuss this subject. It comes up constantly.

I want to say this first though. God is not so concerned with the proper pronunciation of his name. In fact, I believe that there is some mystery surrounding the pronunciation for good reason. In any case, something that may have made more sense in ancient Hebrew, once you bring it into English, it's just going to be a name. Like my name, Michael, doesn't have any specific meaning in English. It goes back to Hebrew, Michael, who is like God.

In English, it's just Michael. So, if you are worshiping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, if you are worshiping the God who created the universe, if you are worshiping the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, if you are worshiping that one God, the one true God, the only God, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, if you're worshiping that God and referring to him as Yahweh or Jehovah or Yahuwah or some other pronunciation, we can rule out so many of them. But if you're worshiping that God, the specific way that you refer to him within these parameters is secondary to knowing who he is. So, I want to emphasize that first. All right, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to read to you from the Anchor Bible dictionary, became the Anchor Yale Bible dictionary, one of the best, most comprehensive Bible dictionaries, not written necessarily all by believers in terms of the articles, but top scholars in their field. I'm going to read that in a moment.

Let me say this first. Overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly, probably a thousand to one, Hebrew scholars reject the idea that God's name was originally pronounced Yehova or Yehova, almost universally. There are some exceptions like Nehemiah Gordon, who's a solid student of the Hebrew language. He's done scholarly research and he's made many people think with his research. So, he would be an outlier.

The difference with Nehemiah Gordon or Nehemiah Gordon, the difference would be that he's become very well known on YouTube and different Christian TV shows and other things. So, his views are out there. So, many people are familiar with his arguments and he's got a good way of breaking things down that people can understand. And perhaps one day, we'll get to have a conversation together, not a debate, but a conversation together. So, I respect his scholarship and his work. I would just say that it's maybe a thousand to one in terms of other scholars differing. In other words, we're familiar with his arguments.

We're familiar with the points he's made. We are not convinced by them in any way. So, with all respect to him, I just want you to understand that because the folks that are doing the linguistic research and the philological research and writing a lot of the scholarly work, they're not going to be here on a radio station talking. The most of them won't be. They won't be, you know, Dr. Michael Heiser was another exception there where he was getting more of his stuff out.

But he would agree with me as well in terms of Jehovah was not originally the pronunciation of God's name. But most of the academic folks, they're teaching in universities and they're writing academic articles. And if I presented some of the material that we, I really couldn't get into it on radio. It's too technical. So, I'm going to do my best to break things down. But let's not divide over this.

There's no reason to get hostile or worked up over it. All right. So, this is reading to you from the Anchor Bible Dictionary. It's under the heading, Yahweh. The name of God in the Old Testament, when it stands alone and with prefixed prepositions or the conjunction wah and, the name is always written with the four Hebrew letters, Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh, and is for that reason called the Tetragrammaton. So, it's from these four letters. In this form, the name appears more than 6,000 times in the Old Testament.

Variation in the Masoretic manuscripts, so these are the manuscripts that have been preserved by Jewish scribes, make it difficult to establish the number of occurrences exactly. Shorter forms of the divine name occur in personal names. At the beginning of names, the form is Yeho, or the contracted form Yo. At the end of names, Yahoo or Yah.

All right. So, what about the pronunciation? The pronunciation of Yahweh, Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh, as Yahweh is a scholarly guest. You say, oh no, but we know it's Jehovah. Why guest?

No. We know it's not Jehovah overwhelmingly. We're trying to understand what exactly it was.

So, back to the text. The pronunciation of Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh, Y-H-W-H as Yahweh is a scholarly guest. Hebrew biblical manuscripts were principally consonantal. So, in other words, primarily written with consonant non-vowels and spelling until well into the current era, meaning after the time of Jesus. The pronunciation of words was transmitted in a separate oral tradition. The Tetragrammaton was not pronounced at all. The word Adonai, my Lord, being pronounced in its place, or Elohim, God, was substituted in cases of the combination Adonai, Yahweh, which is 305 times.

So, when you would have, let me try to explain this. When you would have the Hebrew word Adonai, which is Lord, capital L, or my Lord. When you had that followed by Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh, the divine name. When you had it followed by that, then the Masoretic scribes say, don't pronounce it Adonai, pronounce it Elohim, God.

So, if I was just reading the text, I would say Isaiah 61, 1, Ruach Adonai Elohim, the Spirit of the Lord God is on me. In Hebrew, it's actually Ruach Adonai, Yahweh, Eli, is upon me. But, the scribes, the Masoretic scribes, they were telling you every time you see, the reason they put these vowels in it, was to tell you every time you see this name, this divine name, don't pronounce it as it really is. Instead, say Adonai, Lord. So, you take, as is well known, the vowels from Adonai, Lord, with a consonance, Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh, the tetragrammaton, and that becomes Yehovah, which comes into English as Jehovah. Now, here's what's important to understand. Jewish readers of the text, Jewish scribes, Jewish teachers, for centuries, for over a thousand years, were quite familiar with this. In other words, when they would read their text, they would know. Don't say the name, actually pronounce it, say instead, the Lord. Just like in our English translations, thousands of times you have Lord, capital L, small caps O-R-D, that's telling you the original Hebrew is Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh, the original Hebrew is Yahweh there.

All right? So, they knew. Jewish rabbis, Jewish students of Scripture, down to little boys. When you see that word, don't say the actual name, which is forbidden, but rather say Adonai, Lord. So, this was the way of saying it. We'll take the vowels from Adonai with the consonance for Yahweh. So, when you see it, it looks like Yehovah, but you understand, no, no, no, that's not the name. Don't say it like that.

It was considered sacred. Don't say it. Instead, say Lord. Well, what if you had Adonai, Lord, followed by Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh, the divine name? Well then, in that case, you would pronounce it as if it was the word Elohim, God. And those are the vowels in the text indicating that.

If someone says, no, no, but the earliest manuscripts, they're all showing the same thing. They show those vowels. They show the vowels to pronounce it.

Yahweh, no, no, no. The only ones who began to think of that were in the Middle Ages, late Middle Ages, when Christian scholars began learning Hebrew better and reading the Hebrew Bible, they didn't know the Jewish practice. They thought that was the actual pronunciation, and that's how they came up with Jehovah. That's where they got it from because they didn't understand that the Jewish scribes had put it there to say, whenever you say this, you see these words, don't say the actual name. Instead, say Adonai. Or if it occurs next to Adonai, Lord, don't say the actual name, say Elohim, God. That's what the vowels are telling us.

Now, I'm just going to skip down a little bit to a paragraph that says this. The generally acknowledged vocalization, Yahweh, is a reconstruction that draws on several lines of evidence. The longer of the two reduced suffixing forms of the divine name YHWH indicates that the name probably had the phonetic shape of YHWH with a final vowel. The vowel is supplied on the basis of the observation that the name derives from a verbal root, Hawah, or Hay Vav Yud, which would require the final vowel A. This inference is confirmed by, oh, just trying to read through this in a way that's intelligible, by the element YHWH occurring in names in the Amorite language. There are many, many lines of evidence, Greek transcriptions, other transcriptions that point to the pronunciation YHWH.

It gets too technical. All that to say that when people say, no, but there are thousands and thousands of manuscripts, Hebrew manuscripts, all with the pronunciation YHWH, and no Jews would pronounce that for centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries. You say, why were they writing it? Because they were telling you we are putting the wrong vowels there. This is a practice in Hebrew scribal tradition, which Nehemia Gordon and anyone reading the Hebrew Bible is familiar with. It's a scribal tradition that says certain words in the text you shouldn't pronounce. Instead, read the word that's in the margin. That's the more accurate word that we believe that's the original text, or we don't want to read that in public.

It could be offensive to say that in public, so use this word instead. And they put the wrong wrong vowels in the main text. When you read it, it's like that doesn't fit. It would be like spelling my name Michael, and instead it's M-O-C-H-E-O-L-I. It's like mochioli.

What's that? It's like oh, it's telling you don't say Michael. There's a different word we want you to say using those vowels. So all Jews reading the text for centuries knew that. There was no mystery. You say yeah, but it's in thousands of magazines.

Exactly! And they all knew don't use those words that's telling you say Adonai, Lord, instead. If you asked your average religious Jew how do you pronounce the name, it was secret. It was not something that they knew or understood because it was considered to be forbidden.

I want to just put some slides up for those that are going to watch this, but I'm going to talk through for everybody. One of them is from Exodus chapter 6. All right, Exodus chapter 6, and it's from the Leningrad manuscript. This is the B19A Leningrad manuscript. It's about a thousand years old, the oldest complete copy of the Hebrew Bible that we have, the Masoretic textual tradition, the oldest complete copy that we have. If you have an English translation of the Bible it likely comes, the Old Testament, from this manuscript. And the slide that I'm putting up, it says this, Vayidu ber Elohim El Moshe, and God spoke to Moses, Vayomer, and said Elav to him, Ani, and then you have the divine name, right? So for those that are looking, it is the last word on the left, the last word on the left of the second line. I am YHVH, I am Yahweh, and then it goes on, so I name, but I appeared to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, El Shaddai, and the character of El Shaddai.

Okay, that's a whole interesting subject there, but what I'm going to do when we come back on the other side of the break, I'm going to put on another slide, and I'm going to show you how different vowels are put in for that same name, YHVH, because you're being told pronounce it differently. I'm Paul Burnett, a board certified doctor of holistic health, and I want to take this opportunity to talk to you about the importance of healthy blood flow, and how it's enhanced by a miracle molecule known as nitric oxide. You see, blood vessels release nitric oxide, which increases blood flow known as something called vasodilation. At TriVita, we take blood flow seriously for our members, and we've developed a nitric oxide plus supplement that has been formulated with natural ingredients designed to maximize nitric oxide production in our blood vessels, which increases blood flow. You may be wondering why you don't have as much energy as you used to. One study that I came across revealed that by the age of 40, we only produce about 50% of the nitric oxide production as compared to our 20s, and by the age of 70, the study showed that we're only producing about 15 to 25%.

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As a TriVita introductory offer, use promo code BROWN25 and receive a 25% discount on the products of your choice. Call 1-800-771-5584, 800-771-5584. May you live with greater wellness. This is how we rise up. It's The Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on The Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to Thoroughly Jewish Thursday. Getting a little technical here, talking about the pronunciation of the name of God, that it was certainly not Jehovah or Yehovah that is based on a misunderstanding of the text.

And although a few scholars today have tried to defend that interpretation, there are overwhelming reasons to reject it. One of the biggest being that the very ones who put those vowels in the Hebrew manuscripts, all those centuries, were the very ones who said, we don't speak the name, we don't utter the name, so why would they then tell you how to pronounce it in thousands and thousands of manuscripts, thousands and thousands of times, when the whole thing was, don't pronounce it, don't say it. Again, it would be if my name was written M-C-H-L with no vowels at all, and you say, why is it there?

It's there to get your attention. And if there were different vowels, and it's like, it's telling you, don't say the name Michael, say something else. So right before the break, I put up from the Leningrad manuscript, I put up Exodus chapter 6 verse 3. And those that are a little familiar with Hebrew will see the vowels, these two dots under the yud at the, again, the last word on the second column on the left, the two dots under the yud, and then there's another, it's like a straight line with a line coming out from it under the vav, that's telling you again, pronounce it Adonai. Take the consonants for Yahweh, take the vowels for Adonai, and when you put it together, it comes out Yehoah. All right, now I'm going to put up Isaiah chapter 61. Isaiah chapter 61 verse 1, which I quoted a moment ago, which in Hebrew is Ruach Adonai Elohim Alai. Ruach Adonai Elohim Alai. Now that word Elohim, God, so let's leave the slide up for those watching and those listening, you're driving your car thinking, what?

I'm going to make it clear. All right, so in this case, it is the first line, the second word from the end on the left, so the third from the right, the second from the left, there you have again the divine name, right? Yehoah allegedly, no, no, not this time, this time the vowels are different. The same vowel, the two dots under the first letter, but now under the third letter, the vav, there's a single dot. Why are the vowels different for this name? Because here, the scribes are telling you, pronounce it Elohim. They're taking the vowels from Elohim and they're putting it in the name Yahweh to say, don't say Yahweh, say Elohim. You say, okay, you totally lost me. That's fine for those I lost, for those who are understanding this. The point is, over 300 times the Masoretic scribes did that saying, pronounce it Elohim.

Why? Because it followed the word Lord, Adonai. So instead of saying Adonai, Adonai, no, this time you say Adonai Elohim. Originally it would have been Adonai, most likely Yahweh, all right? So there's another article, for those that want to dig, okay, and I'm not going to go through this any further, but for those who really want to dig, for those who want to get into this more academically, just search for Jewish Encyclopedia, this is free online, Jewish Encyclopedia, and then type in Jehovah. And you'll see an article there by Emil G. Hirsch. Now the Jewish Encyclopedia was one of the great works of Jewish scholarship from over a hundred years ago.

It still retains a lot of value. When you go down to the end of this article, it's going to scroll down to the end, the last paragraph, for those of you who really want to argue this out in Hebrew, the arguments here are very compelling against, against the Jehovah, Yehovah, Yehovah pronunciation. Now I'm not, I was going to try to read through it and explain it, but it's too technical.

It would not be of help unless you're really seriously into Hebrew. And in the meantime, I would just bore thousands, hundreds of thousands, whoever, two, I'd bore a lot of listeners and I won't help anybody. I won't unify anybody.

I won't build you up. I won't give you knowledge that's usable. But for those who want to argue for this pronunciation and think that academically it's the strongest argument. No, academically, the idea that the original pronunciation of God's name was actually Yehovah or Yehovah, academically that is the tiny, tiny, tiny minority view. It doesn't mean it can't be true. I'm just saying academically among scholars, among linguists, among Hebraists, among Old Testament scholars, it is a tiny, tiny minority view that through a few people has become popularized. But academically there's overwhelming weight against it. And again, like I said, maybe one day I could have Nehemia Gordon to have a friendly discussion and I could throw some of the arguments out, which of course he's heard. He'd come with his counter arguments, et cetera.

Just if we could do it in a way that would be helpful and edifying, I would gladly do it. But for those who are really convinced, and you know Hebrew well, well, just the points made in this last paragraph, beginning with the use of the composite Shefa, Ahatef Segal, in cases where Elohim is to be read has led to the opinions, on and on. Okay, the further you get into it, you will see that the Masoretic scribes very clearly we're understanding that this word you're going to pronounce Adonai and that's indicated by the vowels before it and afterwards. Or in this case you're going to pronounce it Elohim as indicated by the vowels before it and afterwards. It doesn't just stand alone. Hebrew grammar with vowels coming in of things, with vowels following, with the pronunciation of letters following certain words.

There's a sequence to it, alright. And once you insert Yehova or Yehova, it doesn't work. The vowels around it don't work.

When you insert Adonai, then it works perfectly. That's what they were saying. That's what they were communicating. And again, this was known to Jews reading the text for century after century after century after century. So the very fact it's written, this Yehova pronunciation, in all these manuscripts is the proof that that's not how you pronounce it because the Jewish scribes were saying, do not say this name.

The last thing they would do is write it out for everyone to see. That being said, you would be amazed friends how incensed some folks get over this. When we tell them there's no such name as Yeshua, never was such a name.

And people get worked up. The only reason I ever brought it up was because people get so worked up about it. I've been in services where people sing the name wrongly. I've talked to people and they're preaching and they say the name wrongly. Unless they ask me, or unless we're really close friends, I'm not going to bring it up.

But when someone makes an issue out of it, you got to say it like this, you got to say it like that. There's one dear brother whose business took off, began to prosper supernaturally. And he says it's when he began to use the name Yehova and call on God as Yehova that his business took off supernaturally. I've heard from people with very different stories about divine names. I've heard from people talking about intimacy with God through using the name Yeshua, or driving out demons only in the name of Jesus.

And on and on it goes. God is bigger than all that friends. The reason I talk about Yeshua is for us to recognize the Jewish roots of the faith, to recognize that he is the Jewish Messiah, to recognize that just like his mother's name was Miryam in Hebrew, Miryam, Miryam in English, and his father was Yosef, his earthly father, and he had disciples with names like Yaakov and Shimon, Yohanan. It's just to remind us that these were Jews and that this was a Jewish movement and that he didn't come to start a new home and garden Sunday religion that would separate itself so completely from its Jewish roots that it would turn Jesus into a white European Christian. No, he was a first century Jew and this is a Jewish movement because he was the Jewish Messiah. He's the Savior of the world because he's the Messiah of Israel. So in the same way we discuss names of God and things like that, the main reason I do is because people get worked up about it and really fight over it and often do so based on ignorance of Hebrew.

You know, the name has to be Yahuwah or even the what idiotic mocking sound of the name like Jesus and Yahawashi. I mean just really sad, sad stuff like that. But people get into it. I'm saying don't get all worked up.

Academically, yeah, you want me to demolish other theories in the most high level academic way, I'm happy to. But that's not the goal. That's not the goal. If you worship God, the God of the Old Testament, and he has been Jehovah to you and you find intimacy with that, he's not saying, no, no, we didn't say it exactly.

That's not who God is. So come on, let's step higher. Let's bless God.

He knows who we are talking about. 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 preach more, listen carefully to this special announcement. Together, friends, we're making a difference. Hey friends, this is Dr. Michael Brown.

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We would love to sign you up, send you those free materials and get you enlisted. And together, friends, we are making a difference. With that, I am going to the phones. I've got one crazy headline I want to read to you a little later in the show.

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 to like even hyper grace have been very helpful, just so you know. But I had I had a big question. 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 how would you respond to somebody who says salvation is 100 percent God and zero percent us? And when they're not just talking about like initial justification, they're talking about like all of life kind of thing, like to get to heaven. The big you know that it's such a big deal. I just 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 when I was a Calvinist, 77 to 82, I 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 some if you could lose your salvation, we all would. So, yeah, we agree. We all agree as followers of Jesus, our meaning Calvinists, that Jesus is the author and the perfecter of our faith.

We all agree on her. We all agree that salvation is a gift from God and that in a trillion lifetimes we could not save ourselves. I would ask, though, a Calvinist, OK, what do you do with the Lord urging us to strive to enter in in the straight gate? For example, Matthew seven or Luke 13. What do you do with him telling you, put on the armor of God, Ephesians six, 10 through 19, and pray with all prayers and supplication? What do you do with first Peter? Five, eight, nine, be sober, be vigilant. Your adversary, the devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, resist him steadfast in the faith. What do you do with First Corinthians nine, 24 to 27, saying, run your race so as to win and on and on. We just say, what do you do with all these exhortations? What do you do with the words of Jesus in Matthew nine to to pray to the Lord of the harvest to thrust forth laborers into his harvest? What do you do with those things 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 I feel this holy responsibility to do. OK, so that's your participation.

What do you do? And as Paul in First Corinthians three describes himself as a fellow worker with the Lord. What 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 percent God, they are they are speaking words. They are participating. And if they if they're immersed in water, they did something. Even though salvation is God's work, that they did not save themselves by by being dipped in water, but they participated. So ask them what 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. You know, and there's the famous Spurgeon quote to the effect, you know, 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. God's just done it all. And all you have to do is just receive it and believe it. You know, 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 nine trillion percent God and zero percent me minus 40 billion. I mean, what do I do with these verses?

Just be practical. Well, you're a synergist versus a modernist. I'm just asking a question. 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. 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, etc. Now, 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 be 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. 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, etc. 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 as 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 you have 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. But 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 human response meaning, well, God will operate his principles.

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 cause? 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, 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, um, who Wesley liked so much, but John Fletcher and the Methodist were big on that second justification of works. And they, they want to, the thing that kills me today, 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, 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, we'd all be damned ultimately through, through words. But, but, um, 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, 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 it, 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, whether, 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.

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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. 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.

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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, 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. 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, verses 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, I've... 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... 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 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, and the big issue for me is 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 throne, 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's 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? Um, so I don't know. I'm honestly, I'm just trying to study the early Church of the Father and how they do 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. 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 require. But you're giving it prayerful thought, which I appreciate. So I'm going to jump in because of time. A few weeks from now, God will continue to conversate.