Exploding Internet Bible Myths

Boy, there's such wacky teaching on the Internet. Some of it goes viral.

Where do people get this stuff from? 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 eight six six three four truth to get on the line of fire. And now here's your host.

Dr. Michael Brown Thanks for joining us friends on the line of fire Michael Brown as always delighted to be with you as all of us stand today in the line of fire together on the front lines. We are here to hold your hands up. We're here to encourage you, build you up, strengthen you, infuse you with faith and truth and courage. So together in Jesus, we can shine our light in dark places together.

We can make a difference coming your way from our state of the world. We're here in the studio at the great campus in Christ for the nations in Dallas having a wonderful time with the students here from almost 50 nations around the world and all over America, talking about following Jesus by life or by death. Just discipleship one oh one today. We're just going to address some of the wackiness that's out there that goes viral online. These crazy Bible teachings that people just get sucked in by. We're going to talk about it. And then how do how do we deal with this when it's just everywhere? You can't deal with it all.

You can't fix it all. How do we even think about this? So if you've heard something online, some teaching, there's always controversy. I understand there are different doctrines and controversies, but there's always controversy. If you've heard some recent teaching, I never knew this before.

Oh, wow. I just found this out about the Hebrew, the Greek or the name of God or this or that. And it maybe sounds a little weird to you or you're just wondering about it. Give me a call today. Eight, six, six, three, four, truth, eight, six, six, three, four, eight, seven, eight, eight, four.

I'm not just taking your general random Bible questions or theology questions, but rather trying to sift through some confusion here and help us get sanity in the midst of the insanity of what's out there. Oh, was it? Yeah, I guess it was last year I started hearing from a bunch of people, folks I don't know. But, Dr. Brown, have you seen this video? Dr. Brown, have you seen this video?

You should really check this out. So it was a video that had been viewed, I don't know, a couple million times with a companion book. And it was based on the first word of Genesis in Hebrew, brashit. And then it was based on going back to an original script, which is called paleo script. Paleo is just an old form of the script. It's not an old form of a language. It's just an old form of the script where it was written. And the paleo script in turn goes back to earlier pictographic forms, but those pictographic meanings are completely lost once it becomes just a regular script, as all Hebrew scholars would know and understand. In any case, it was now reconstructing based on an alleged original pictographic meanings of Genesis, one moment simply do not exist in Hebrew. But it was now reconstructing things and it laid out based on that prophecies that Jesus would rapture his church before the end of 2018, really by September.

And the video had been posted a few years earlier. So I wrote an article in July saying enough with these crazy rapture prophecies, whether you believe in a preacher rapture or not, it's not the issue at all. But enough with these crazy rapture prophecies. This is not going to happen. I absolutely guarantee you it's not going to happen based on the word.

It's not going to happen. I guarantee it 100 percent and plus the alleged meanings it was driving from Genesis one one simply do not exist. You might as well get in time prophecy from the phone book.

It would be just as bogus. So I posted an article with with the title enough with these crazy rapture prophecies and I did a broadcast about it and I said, OK, archive the article and archive the video archive this video, which is still on YouTube, still there, has been taken down, still there. Just looked at it right before I got on the air. Archive the article, my article, archive the video and see which one ages better.

Well, why am I talking about these things again today? A colleague of mine, rock solid man of God, man of the word, mature believer, sends me a video last night, a TikTok video and says, hey, is there any truth to this? So this is a solid believer. This is a mature man of God. This is not some novice. It's not someone just easily influenced by the latest wind of teaching. But this video made him wonder.

So before I go into my extreme. Put down mode, exposing this absolute ridiculous idiotic nonsense, I want you to hear it for yourself. If you're watching, you see the video, everyone else, you'll hear it. Let's listen together.

I just read an article about the Disney company. All right. I'm not hearing anything. We just have a slight delay here. Okay. And tell me when we got it ready. Produce this Bible series.

All right. Let's let's put it back and start from the beginning. Let's start from the beginning. I just read an article about the Disney company buying their rights to the Bible. Get the Bible. Check this out. The original intent of the seven point two billion dollar purchase was to create, produce this Bible series. However, the story begins to thicken when they purchased the rights to the NIV as well as the RSV.

You'll never guess what happened next. Matthew seventeen twenty one was completely deleted from both versions. Look, but this kind of demon does not go out except by prayer and fasting. It's not there.

It literally skips from twenty to twenty two in both versions. This is exactly why it's vitally important to study the word and know it for yourself. If they take it away, you need to know what it says.

If they change it, you need to know what it says. Jesus is soon to return. You need to be ready. Watch the video I provided.

Come back and follow for more. OK, I agree with that, dear woman, that we need to study the word and we need the readiness for the return of Jesus. But this is beyond idiotic. This is beyond ridiculous.

This is beyond just plain stupid. Number one, Disney had nothing to do with the translation of the NIV, which was first in 1984, then the revised edition in 2011. Disney the Disney Corporation had nothing to do with the translation of the NIV.

It had even less to do with the translation of the RSV in 1946. And buying the right. What do you buy the rights of the you want to make a series about the Bible, make a series about the Bible. You don't buy the rights of the Bible. But I mean, I might as well tell you, I might as well tell you that that Barack Obama counseled Abraham Lincoln to free the slaves. After Abraham Lincoln was talking to Moses about how the children of Israel came out of Egypt.

I mean, you might as well just mix things from completely different worlds. It's hard for me to even come up with something as ridiculous as what you just heard there. But it's as if you're actually reading a quote. The Disney Corporation, so Walt Disney Corporation removed a verse from the Bible in the RSV and the NIV. Oh, hang on. Hang on.

If you look at a host of other modern translations today, like the ESV or like the NASB or like the NET or many other fine translations, you'll find that none of them have that verse either. Maybe Disney bought all of them. Maybe Mickey Mouse is secretly removing verses from the Bible. Is that what's really happening? You say, Dr. Brown, you're being harsh. I am mocking an absurd thing that people here believe spread. It's falsehood.

It's nonsense. You say, but hang on. Hang on. Hang on. I have the King James.

And the King James says, however, this kind goes not out, but by prayer and fasting. And it's not in the NIV. Correct. And it has nothing to do with Walt Disney or Mickey or Minnie or Daffy or Donald or anybody else as in Daffy Duck and Donald Duck.

It has no more to do with Walt Disney than it has to do with the man in the moon, who, by the way, doesn't even exist. This is simply a textual issue with all the different modern translations. There is one Greek text that's used by, say, the King James, the New King James, the MEV versions like that. And there's another Greek text that's used by the ESV and the NIV and the majority of modern translations today. And it's it's simply a textual dispute.

It's it's that simple. The the the one text that's used by the King was used by the King James translators, known as the majority text best represented by what's called the T.R., the Textus Receptus is also known as the the Byzantine text. And that reflects the great majority of Greek New Testament manuscripts that we have.

The great, great, great majority are in harmony on these points. OK, here and there a little bit more expansive verses that are not found in others. Some words that are not found in others are found there. That's what I grew up reading King James Bible. And King James is a beautiful, wonderful translation that speaks powerfully to this day. However, the earliest manuscripts, which many scholars, the majority of Greek New Testament scholars believe, reflect the original, the closest text in the New Testament, do not have some of these verses. And the the understanding is that these were added later. For example, Mark nine twenty twenty nine and all of our Bible says, however, this kind only comes out by prayer.

The the majority text followed by the King James is by prayer and fasting. But at least you have that other verse there in Mark nine twenty nine. Why didn't they take it out there? Why didn't Mickey Mouse take out that that first there? Why did they leave it in there?

You say, no, no, no, no, no. These modern translations, they take out the blood of Jesus. Well, why is it they have the blood, the blood, the blood, the blood, the blood, the blood? And then one verse, they don't.

Could it be because it wasn't in that original verse? Generally speaking, scribes copying manuscripts, there are more inclined to add than to take away, generally speaking. In other words, let's just say you had my name written 10 times in a manuscript.

Michael L. Brown, Michael Brown, Michael Brown, Michael Brown, Michael Brown. But one time I was written Michael Brown. It's very natural and easy for a scribe to accidentally add the L in as he's copying because he just thinks it's going to be there because it's been there or thinks, oh, that got left out. Generally speaking, that's easier to do than to think describe after copying Michael Brown 10 times is just going to leave out the L that's less natural. So scribes tend to expand, not contract, not always. But when you just look at ancient manuscripts, when you compare in ancient cultures, you have copies and different manuscripts. I remember learning these things as I was studying inscriptions in Ugaritic and Akkadian and different things.

And you could see scribal tendencies that that's just a known tendency. So it's more likely that a verse was added in by a later scribe because it was similar to what was found in another gospel or similar to a teaching that was found somewhere else. Or like First John five seven, which is not in any ancient Greek manuscript in the world, not a single one. There are three that bear a record in heaven, the father, the word, the Holy Ghost. These three are what they took it out of the Bible. Walt Disney took it out. No, no, no.

It's just was not in any original manuscript was added many centuries later. In any case, how do we deal with this weirdness? How do we deal with this wackiness?

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Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks again to our co-sponsor TriVita. You know, one of the neatest things is we get so many return orders. We just noticed because TriVita very generously donates of the funds that come in to help us get on more stations and reach more people. And we get so many new folks checking it out, but so many return customers, which means you're seeing good results, which makes me happy. That you're benefiting and that you're helping us reach more people.

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866-348-7884. If you've seen something on internet and you've wondered, is this true? Is this accurate? Is this real? And it's kind of going viral.

It's become trendy. Today's a good day to call in. 866-34-TRUTH.

I'll go to the phones in a moment. Somebody asked me about this in another one of these things that goes viral. Let me read this to you. There's even a website breathing the name Yahweh. Oh, breathing the name Yahweh. Start saying this. Is it possible that every breath you take, you are breathing the name Yahweh?

It has been said that the Jewish sages associated the name with breath. OK, fair enough. Show me. Show me. Is there a citation? Can you give me the original source?

Can you tell me exactly where this is? OK, ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus says in his description of the inscription on the mitre of the high priest, a mitre also fine linen encompassed his head which was tied by blue ribbon about which there was another golden crown and which was engraved in the sacred name. It consists of four vowels. Four vowels. It's really four letters. So it's not there.

OK, I'm just looking through the article trying to find where the Jewish sages say this and Josephus was a historian, not a sage. I'm not finding it. I never heard it my whole life. It's my field of learning.

Near Eastern languages, literature, academic study, I never heard it. It has been said that the Jewish sages associated the name with breath, the uniqueness of the two syllable form Yahweh can indeed be breathed. Try it. Inhale Yah and exhale Weh. You can exhale Yah and inhale Weh. And now as you're breathing, every breath, you're saying the divine name?

No, no, no. You want to talk about taking the name of a foreign face? As you're breathing, you're unconsciously saying his name.

You're not saying his name. And by the way, it is not natural to inhale with Yah. It's not just it's not natural. It doesn't even work. Just try and do it for a second. Inhale. OK. That's not a Yah. It's hard to.

Let me try it one more time. Yah. It's not natural to inhale like that or to inhale with what these are.

Exhale. Yah. Yah. Weh.

But this is the people get into this in a secret meaning to it. And Yahweh is our very breath and. You don't need the nonsense to know that the Lord is our life. You don't need the nonsense to know that our every breath depends on him. This stuff does nothing. It adds nothing to us.

All it is is speculative foolishness. And by the way, Bruce Metzger, one of the world's foremost New Testament textual scholars, in his famous textual commentary on the New Testament, said this about Matthew 17, 21. This kind goes out, does not come out, go out, except by prayer and fasting.

Right. He says this in his commentary, why it's not in our in our most ancient manuscripts, since there is no satisfactory reason why the passage, if originally present in Matthew, should have been omitted in a wide variety of witnesses. And you still have similar passage in Mark. And we know this yearly church was given to prayer and fasting.

There's no reason to take it out. There's no logical reason why it's not in Matthew. So since there's no satisfactory reason why the passage, if originally present in Matthew, should have been omitted in a wide variety of witnesses. And since copyist frequently inserted material derived from another gospel, it appears that most manuscripts have been assimilated to the parallel of Mark nine twenty nine, which you had the same account in Mark nine twenty nine in Mark the ninth chapters. You had Matthew the 17th chapter.

So many copies just. Oh, I guess that's missing. It's there in Mark. And they added it in.

That's the way it normally happens. But there's no conspiracy behind it. If you say, no, Dr. Brown, I believe that the majority text is the is the original text. I believe that the text is receptive.

This is the most accurate. OK, that's that's a matter between Greek textual scholars. Right. You can have that debate and you can say, well, it's attested here.

And it's fine. Fine. Have that debate. A fair debate.

Go ahead and discuss as as Greek scholars, the students of the original text, which is the most accurate, which which gives us the clearest and closest to the original New Testament in Greek. Have that discussion. But don't blame it on Walt Disney. Don't come up with some secret conspiracy that the others were trying to remove this. It's just not the way textual history goes.

You know, another thing that's actually a whole documentary made about it. And this another viral claim that the word homosexual is introduced into the RSV in nineteen forty six. And and because of that has led to anti-gay bias in the church. Now, it is true that the word homosexual was first used in the 1946 RSV because the older translations, King James and its and its revisions over the years, the word homosexual did not exist in the English language. Right.

So that doesn't happen to what, late eighteen hundreds. So it's going to be a translation in the nineteen hundreds that might use the word. And it wasn't the best word to use anyway, because we could use the word homosexual just for someone who is same sex attracted, but doesn't act on it.

Right. Whereas the Bible's talking about men who have sex with men, men who are practicing homosexuality. So if you're going to translate it, one or two of the Greek words in First Corinthians six, nine and the first Timothy one, you would say men who practice homosexuality and men who have sex with men.

But but but here here's here's the whole problem. The church universally taught against homosexual practice, as did the synagogue from earliest times through the centuries without ever wavering. The RSV didn't change anything. Moreover, moreover, the RSV was completely rejected by the conservative Christian world. You know, Isaiah 714, it said young woman instead of virgin will conceive. That was considered heretical and all this. So the conservative Christian world that already believed that homosexual practice was sinful, based on other passages in scripture, did not like the RSV. The RSV was burned publicly by some of the fundamentalists because it was considered heretical. So the churches that would have been influenced were the ones that were the more liberal churches.

And those churches today are the ones that embrace homosexual practice among committed Christians or allegedly committed Christians, et cetera. But who is conspiracy? No, no, no. Just another Internet myth. Yes, the word was first used in that translation.

There's nothing to do with the whole history of the church's views about homosexual practice, especially in conservative Christian circles that completely rejected the RSV. All right. So I'm going to go to the phones.

We come back, take some of your calls, respond to some posts on Internet. When I asked about some of the wackiest things you're hearing. But let me say this in short. I wrote an article a few months ago saying you can't play whack a mole with heresy. Whack a mole is this arcade game where it's just like a tabletop and you have this this thing, you know, it's a little club that you hit things with soft club and and a little mole would pop out this plastic mole, roll and you hit you try to hit it before it went back to two.

And it's your next thing. And then and then ultimately you lose because there are too many moles and not enough time to hit. You can't do that with heresy. If I spent every waking minute of every day, let's say I could be awake 24 hours every day.

And I just correct it. Weird, bogus, crazy stuff that's out there in the body. I don't even mean just doctrinal controversies within the body. But if that's all I did every day, every week, I still wouldn't have enough time to do it. So the best thing we can do is cultivate sound thinking, solid interpretation of scripture, and encourage people to major on the majors to not go looking for every kind of esoteric discovery.

Major on the majors. There's enough depth, enough riches, enough wisdom to spend eternity digging and learning and growing. They'll be right back. You could be cast out. You could be put down.

You could be silenced. I'm here to say, friends, that I am not about to be silenced and I don't believe you are either. It is time for us to stand up. It is time for us to say enough is enough. It is time for us to push back in Jesus name, not fighting the way the world fights.

No, overcoming evil with good, overcoming hatred with love, overcoming the flesh with the power of the spirit, overcoming lies with truth. And that's what we're here to do on the Line of Fire broadcast. And friends, it's not just a broadcast. It is a movement of people around the world. God's people standing up saying enough is enough and saying, Lord, here we are. Send us, use us. I want to urge you today to join our support team because we are on the front lines together.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us. Well, I was so focused on getting into this material today and just so grieved over more nonsense and deception. I completely forgot to remind you if you're not getting our cutting edge frontline equipping newsletter that we are so eager to get into your hands. Just coming out once a month now, which means we really make it special. We can't wait to get you the February edition.

It will be coming out in the middle of the month. So go to our website. If you're not getting the emails, go there now. The line of fire dot org. The line of fire dot org. And sign up to get our frontline newsletter. You'll want to get it.

You'll be blessed to look forward to it every single month. All right. With that, let's take some calls.

We'll start with Christian in Toledo, Ohio. Welcome to the line of fire. Christian, are you still there? All right. Maybe not. Let's go over to Katie in Arizona.

Welcome to the line of fire. OK, it appears that we are having an issue with our phones, so hasn't happened in a while, so I need our studio in Concord, North Carolina, to interact with our studio in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where the calls are being taken to find out what's going on, because there have been some setting issues in the past. It didn't happen yesterday. I took calls yesterday, so it's not on our end here. So, guys, figure it out and get back to me. OK, so Christian, Katie, Christopher, others, hang on and we'll get to you as soon as we can. So I asked folks right before the show, literally right before I went on the air. I just posted on Facebook and I posted on X and I said, hey, are there crazy teachings that you're running into online? And Facebook, I suddenly got this flood. I thought, whoa, OK, this is yeah, I'm just scrolling down.

Oh, boy. OK, 60 something comments just poured in there immediately and then let's see on X. OK, let's see here. Yeah. OK, now, now some some are just doctrinal disputes, doctrinal disputes, right? Historic doctrinal disputes and and. You know, that's all it is, OK, and this is now getting played out online, Calvinism versus Armin is as such, this verse continuation is in preacher rapture versus poetry. Other things like that, different eschatologies. So that's out there and maybe some of it seems wacky to you.

But. Yeah, let's see. Yeah, David, Hebrew roots, Torah ism and this whole yah yahushah nonsense see all the time to you. So there is a lot of stuff that you get the sacred name stuff that there's a special pronunciation to God's name. I just gave you the breathing nonsense, but there's a special pronunciation and you have to kind of learn that and say it then has special power.

Now, here's the deal. We need to understand who God is when when when the Bible talks about knowing his name, it means who he is more than anything. That's that's the most important thing, who he is within the pronunciation of the name. And for example, if we went to the earliest pronunciation of Yeshua, it actually has this this Ryan at the end, which we find very difficult to pronounce. And and you also have, for example, in Greek, you didn't have a sound. So the moment that the New Testament is written in Greek or anyone referred to Yeshua in Greek, it was now Yesu, Yesus, because you didn't have a sound. That's why you have Saul in English when Hebrew Shaul. So Shaul comes into Greek, you lose the sha and then from Greek into Latin into and makes its way into English.

All right. So there are plenty of things that you can't say. There are syllables that we can't say or excuse me, phonemes that we can't pronounce. You know, for example, if you go back to the earliest Semitic pronunciation, you would have like a saw tall tall and tall. These different sounds that are preserved, say, in Arabic that are not preserved in modern Hebrew. All that to say we couldn't even pronounce some of the things in the original. All right. But the idea you have to say the name and it's Yahushua, which, of course, is another made up name or Yahuwah and all other made up names that don't exist and don't have a a phonological or morphological basis that don't even make sense.

If you're trying to reconstruct it in the in the original to say that those things have been around and had the sacred name Bibles. But but they they they just take off. Everything has a life of its own on Internet. Things things take off.

I'm just communicating with our studio here trying to find out what is going on so I can go back to the calls here. But all. Things take off online. Everything is multiplied. The fact that we can be nasty gets multiplied. The fact that there can be sexual immorality and access to porn that gets multiplied. The fact that you can get the gospel out that gets multiple. Everything gets multiplied.

Good and bad on line. Even the Hebrew quote, the question of Hebrew roots, et cetera. On the one hand, it's great to understand the foundations of Torah through scripture and Jesus. Yeshua said he didn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill. Right. So that's that's something we need to understand. And Paul says so it was Matthew five pulses in the Romans three that faith establishes the law. And then Romans 10 for the Messiah is the goal, though, that which the Torah has been pointing to. It's good to understand that.

What does Paul mean? He says we're not under the law. What about gentiles? What about Jewish believers?

How do these things work themselves out? All good, fair questions to ask. You know, the Bible never changed the Sabbath to Sunday. So should we keep a seventh day Sabbath or is it up to the churches as a whole to worship on other days?

These are all fair questions, fair questions. But what happens is things on Internet become cult like. They become fad like.

Everybody gets drawn in by them in some dramatic ways. All right. Let's go back and try again to see if we've solved the problem. All right. Christian, can you hear me? Yes.

Here I can hear you. All right. Smart. Perfect. Perfect. Go ahead.

OK. A coach says, do you want to meet 32? It's always the son of El. They said online, but I just wrote it up and it says you're always the son of El.

But this was removed by a later revision to the text. And then the last one says in Psalm 82, Elohim stands in the council of El. So trying to say Elohim El is two different gods from Yahweh. So what do you think about that?

Yes. So the first, the Deuteronomy 32 eight, there is no textual support for that. There is nothing in any Hebrew or ancient biblical manuscript anywhere that says that Yahweh was once a son of El. So that's just based on reconstructions, based on Canaanite religion and things like that, where El was the El slash god, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon and things like that. So that's the question of does it say that that God established the nations based on the children of of of Israel? You know, that he portioned things out. There's a textual issue in Deuteronomy 32 eight.

That's a whole separate thing. But Psalm 82 does say that Elohim, God, stands in the council of El. All that is is poetic parallelism. Just like if I'm writing a sentence, Christian, and I'm saying the Lord spoke this and God said that. Am I talking about two different beings, the Lord and God? You know, sometimes I'm writing an article and I think, boy, I've said Lord, Lord, Lord a lot.

I should say God. And we're talking about the same being. So in Hebrew parallelism, that's all it is. It's not saying that Elohim, who's one God, stands in the council of El, who's the other God. The only question is, does Elohim there mean God's plural, which could be referring to angels, which is which is not which is not the case there. Or or is it simply saying the way we translate it, which is correct, that that Elohim God stands in the council of God and just two different ways of saying it. That that's all just think if I said the Lord said in the in the divine council or the council of God to say anything. Now, who is the divine council of those angelic beings of those fallen angelic beings included? Is it speaking about Israelite rulers? That's the debate. And what did Jesus mean in John 10 when he says you are sons of God? But no.

Here's what happens. You'll have a good scholar, the late Michael Heiser, my colleague, departed colleague Michael Heiser, who's a legitimate biblical Hebrew Semitic scholar and would talk about interpretations of of of Psalm 82 and the divine council and spoke the unseen realm and other books. And he and Dr. White would have very different interpretations of Psalm 82, and they'd both point to John 10 to support their viewpoint. Read the Bible against that backdrop. How do we understand it? What then happens is people who don't have the knowledge, who don't have the scholarship, get a little of the information.

Then they join that together with critical scholars who reject the inspiration authority of scripture and just look at it as kind of the Israelites own mythology. And they put the whole thing together and they end up with all this weird stuff. Hey, thank you, sir, for the call. Let's go over to Katie in second try in Arizona. Welcome to the broadcast. Hi, Dr. Brown. Can you hear me? Yes, I can.

Thanks. OK, I'm I'm a young Bible college student and I've had some of this stuff come up in our church, even in devotionals where people say just really strange things to the Yahweh breath one. And I think somewhere the church struggles with is correcting and maybe I don't know. Do I see how to correct it and how to address it? I don't know what happened. You just dropped out there. So this is extremely odd. In fact, I just seems like I lost the connection somewhere. OK, well, we'll get this. We'll get this worked out.

So sorry for that. So you you're absolutely right that sometimes it's like people are we don't want to hurt somebody's feelings. And we don't want to be like always correcting error and stuff.

But what we need to do it now, you there may not be a setting where you can do it, where you are sitting. You know, they share something in a Bible said it's not your place. But then immediately afterwards, you say, hey, can I talk to you about that?

Where did you get that from? Or are you sure? Or can we maybe talk to the pastor or Bible study leader about this and then get the thing corrected? Someone came up to me yesterday after I taught and I'll come back to that on the other side of the break. Ask me a question. But when he read the translation, I said, OK, that's the first problem. Don't don't use that Bible as your primary translation. It's a paraphrase.

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Michael Brown, delighted to be with you. So this young man asked me a question. It was from the end of 1 John. It was a question about what does it mean when you see someone sinning a sin that's not unto death? Pray for them if it isn't to death.

Don't pray for them. What does that mean? It's a very difficult passage and there's a lot of controversy about its exact meaning. But I saw from what was reading that it was a paraphrase. So I said, all right, here's the first problem. And he's coming to me as respects me, honors me as a teacher, as an elder, as a father, as a leader.

Right. So I said, OK, first thing, don't make this your primary translation. The passion translation said it's a paraphrase. Now, some of it is a very close translation of this paraphrase, some extreme paraphrase. And you will see when it's ultimately completed, if it ends up being less of a paraphrase, et cetera.

But in any case, I said, whatever you do, don't use that as your primary translation. Well, somebody just given it to him. Beautiful Bible.

Just give it to him. New Testament Psalms Proverbs. I think it was. I said, so read what you know, whatever your main translation is. And, you know, there are a bunch of really good English translations.

And then that's a part of that. Now you're going to see how someone else interprets it, what one understand that they put on it. And then I said, here's possible understandings of the verse.

And I directed into the last two verses of James Jacob, the fifth chapter, to look at those and to see what insight he got from that. But, yeah, a lot of times you don't want to tell someone you're actually wrong or know that that's not true. And and sometimes we don't do it from the pulpit.

So we again, we're not supposed to be rebuking every single error. But when when someone something major sweeps through the body, we better address it. That's where I wrote Hypergrace, for example, or some other things, or even in a controversy, like different views of the end times. Craig Keener and I wrote not afraid of the Antichrist. Why we don't believe in a pre tribulation rapture is not to divide over it. It's not to dishonor my brothers and sisters or brothers and sisters with different views. But we've been asked about it a lot. So we wrote it so you could see it, understand it.

Things like Hypergrace literally for a year. Every church I went to is the first conversation the pastor had. This doctor is tearing up my church. It's got all kinds of division, people falling into sin and so on. So I knew God was burdening me to address it, to write about it.

Other things, you know, the rising tide of Christian anti-Semitism. We write on that. We address that. But I'm not the corrector in chief. I'm not the policeman of the body.

There is no policeman. There is no corrector in chief. But we should emphasize sound doctrine foundations. Really make sure those are laid deeply and well in the hearts and minds of God's people. And then create a desire to really know God better and really walk with him more closely and be more fruitful and not get caught up on side issues.

The side issues don't help us and they don't help the world around us. So if we could cultivate that, the word is deep enough and rich enough to keep you digging and studying and learning for centuries, forever as God uncovers things and who God is himself and then living out what he requires. The older I get, the more I major on the majors, on the majors, on the majors. Let's cultivate a hunger, a thirst, a desire for that. Let's go over to Oklahoma City. Christopher, welcome to the line of fire. Good afternoon, Dr. Brown. Hey. Hey, well, I had a question and then that turned into another question while you were trying to deal with the calls. And you literally answered every question that I had. I was going to ask about the sacred name stuff. Seriously.

And I was going to ask, how do we handle dealing with brothers and sisters when we come across these crazy things? Well, here we go. I'm kind of sitting here stunned right now, thanking the Lord that he used someone like yourself to answer those before I even had a chance to ask him.

Hey, look, it's even in Scripture that he answers our prayers before we even pray sometimes. So glad to have him. Hey, Christopher, thanks so much for the call. I appreciate it. No problem, Dr. Brown. You have a blessed day.

You too. You know, I remember when I was first saved, we would go to a church service and we went to several a week. And so many times we'd be having a discussion. You know, we'd be we'd be because we're new believers and we're all reading the word. And I was reading this.

Well, this means I was wondering about this. I can't tell you how many times the discussion we had in the half hour car ride to the church service was what the pastor would preach on that night. And I remember we got into a discussion about genealogies and why genealogies of the Bible.

And the pastor started preaching every genealogy. The only time I could ever remember him doing that, we thought, isn't that amazing? You know, it just just kind of the way it was for a season. So that that's kind of cute. I appreciate that on the air here.

Let me say one other thing. When I was younger in the Lord and now I was learning Hebrew and other languages and it was somewhat arrogant, you know, memorized thousands of verses. And and I just got into a time of some theological intellectual pride. I kind of enjoyed bursting people's bubble.

I mean, it was really immature. And someone would come to me and say, hey, Mike, I just. Man, I never knew this verse meant this. I just heard this particular thing. And I'd say it doesn't say that at all.

There's no such thing. I just shoot it down or I'd say, read this verse. It completely contradicts your theory.

But I thought, you know, as I as I mature and I thought this is babyish. And these are sincere people and they love the Lord and they're excited about what they thought was was a discovery. So what I would try to do, if the discovery was true in itself, there was they had the wrong verse. They misunderstood the Hebrew, they misunderstood the Greek.

But what they were saying was true. Overall, I'd say, you know, that's not that that's not the what that verse really means. Go over to this verse, because that verse really says what you're talking about. In other words, if they had discovered something that was truthful in itself and scriptural in itself. Well, I was going to I was going to be faithful to tell them, no, the verse you just said, it doesn't mean that.

No, actually, the Hebrew, the Greek doesn't mean that. See, I'm going to burst that bubble, but I'm going to replace it with something better. Hey, here's a verse that really says that clearly. So let's not be immature. And then we burst another Internet mobile.

We burst another Internet myth. No, let's say, OK, hey, it's really interesting that that you were seeking that and you found the insight there. Let's let's see if scripture really says that. And maybe maybe there's something deeper we can learn. Maybe there's something more profound we can learn. Maybe there's a greater insight that we can get.

So take away the false, but then ground people even more in the in the truth. We go to Alabama. OK, I was going to talk to John, but I think John is maybe standing next to a jet engine or something. So can't take that call. I don't know what happened. All right. I want to encourage you to not go to either of two extremes. Don't go the way of gullibility of just, oh, wow, I never knew that before.

That's OK. If this is not something that you can find laid out in an English translation. Write some amazing insight on a verse. But no translators got it. The King James didn't get it. The New King James didn't get it. The NIV didn't get it. The ESP didn't get it. The any TV get at the any S.P. didn't get at the HSP didn't get at the ISP didn't get the TV didn't get it that that JNT didn't get just on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

None of them got it. You can be sure it's not what the verses can be. You can be sure, because if it was there, with all the diversity in translation, with all the centuries of academic work that goes into a translation, the combined centuries of research, and just the making of a major lexicon, the incredible amount of work that goes into it, the amount of scholarship, the amount of research, the amount of digging, the amount of comparing to other texts and other notes and reading commentaries and so on, comparing to other languages, it's a massive master prediction. My doctoral dissertation was on one Hebrew word and focused on that.

And I've written whole articles, just deep academic articles, just on what would be called a particle, just like, hey, ha, behold, a word like that, and sifted it through in Hebrew and Ugaritic and other languages, the Akkadian dialect at Elamar and stuff, which had Canaanite elements. And you go that deep, right? And sometimes you make your way into a dictionary. They reference your article giving a new insight. And you've got scholars who've given their life to the study of the word. And many of them love the Lord.

And they're digging in. If you can't find it represented in any respectable English translation, then you can be sure it doesn't say that in the original, because somebody would have found it. There's not a commentary on the planet that got this right. Well, then it's because you're wrong, because somebody would have discovered it somewhere. Maybe it gets neglected. Maybe you can bring more force to a neglected interpretation. But if nobody's ever discovered it and you can't even read the original or you just got a year to read the original, you haven't discovered something that people have given their lives to have discovered.

That's why God puts teachers in the body. So so be careful. Don't always be looking for new things.

Remember, in Acts 17, it speaks about the people of Athens in a derogatory way that they'd spend all the time just talking about something new. On the flip side, don't become cynical. I was many, many years back in my days, right. But intellectual theological pride, late 70s, early 80s, there's a real cynicism and a skepticism.

And yeah, I'm still sarcastic, but it was kind of just built in scorn. I know more. We know more. We're the ones who really have the information and and God honors simplicity. Jesus says that God has hidden his revelation from from the wise and the prudent, from those who think they know and revealed it to babes, revealed it to those who just say, God, I want to know you and understand you. And I've often found people that can't read the Hebrew, can't read the Greek, but really know the Lord, giving me insight into what the word of God means, stuff I never saw. I never saw, but they saw it. And then when I dug, it's like, wow, it's really there. And conversely, great scholars have helped me understand the word of God, too. Let's be people of faith, let's be people of worth, let's make the main thing the main thing. I'll be back with you tomorrow.