How to Fight the Good Fight

My guest today is going to help you fight the good fight. 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. Welcome, friends, to the Line of Fire broadcast. Michael Brown, very excited about the interview that will be coming your way from now to the bottom of the hour. I'll take your calls later in the show.

866-34-8784. You know, we look at the world around us. We look at the culture.

We know things are messed up. We want to bring about positive change. It's in our gut as followers of Jesus that we should do something, but what and how? My guest, Professor Jay Richards, he is currently the director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion and Family and the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He's been with the Discovery Institute, expert in both economics and science, as well as the culture, but a professor at Catholic University, and he and James Robison. So both of your colleagues of mine, they've written a new book, Fight the Good Fight.

How an alliance of faith and reason can win the culture war. Jay, welcome back to the Line of Fire. So good to have you. Oh, great to be with you, Michael.

Thank you. So first question that many would ask, is it too late? Has the ship sailed?

Is it too late for America? I don't think it is. And James, my co-author and I don't think it is at all. And in fact, we've noticed weird kind of changes. I mean, it felt this way, honestly. It did feel like, OK, maybe too late. Come 2015, that was when the Supreme Court basically struck down 40 some odd state laws that define marriage naturally as between a man and a woman.

It just felt like, you know, loss after loss after loss. Now, we had silver lining, of course, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. But James and I had written a book in 2012 called Indivisible Together, also during a presidential election year. And it was in some ways a kind of traditional Christian conservative book.

And we said, we've got to do something for 2024. And I went back and read this book that we've just written 12 years ago that we're in a different world now because, yeah, we're at a moment in which people that were referring to themselves as very much on the left, suddenly they woke up during the COVID lockdown and then they really awakened a lot of them over the gender madness that you've been writing about for many years. I mean, these are people that supported same sex marriage. They're pro choice on abortion, live in California, think of themselves as leftists. And all of a sudden thinking, wait a second, we're putting boys in girls bathrooms and sterilizing minors because they feel the stress of their bodies. Something has gone seriously wrong. And that's that's new for us culturally, because that issue in some ways, it reorients people.

It's sort of an anchor issue. It's not like your sort of views on marginal income tax rates and stuff. This is about human nature, basic reproduction, male and female. These are things that are available to people's natural reason and to their eyes, even if they don't have a really strong world view or have any kind of Christian orientation. That's why we talk about this alliance of faith and reason.

Yes. So it is interesting, the same people that want to be broad minded, they didn't want to be intolerant, they didn't want to be bigots. Hey, if two people love each other, love is love. They didn't sign up for a 15 year old boy sharing a locker room with their daughter or keeping her from getting a scholarship when she turns 18 because that kid beat her and pushed her off the finals in her sport. They didn't sign up for that. And it's interesting that a lot of the cultural pushback in the last year or two was led by people like Kid Rock and Joe Rogan or voices like Bill Maher or Richard Dawkins. You think, what in the world?

So, so people, they're just waking up. So what do you mean then by this alliance of faith and reason? Well, it's different from, so, you know, we all know, I mean, anyone that's a conservative Christian, here's the bitter truth is there are probably not, you know, if you take really serious conservative evangelicals, conservative Catholics, let's include, you know, the Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews in there, right? We still don't have a, that's not a governing coalition just in terms of raw numbers. So the question is, okay, what does the conservative coalition look like in 2024?

And it's different from what it was 12 or 13 years ago. And we're trying to figure out, okay, how do we move the independent voters that are kind of in the middle? What I'm seeing is lots of people, I mean, Bill Maher is a great example or Richard Dawkins, right? I retweet Richard Dawkins now, what a strange world we live in. But I am surrounded by people like Jamie Reid, who is, you know, she refers to herself as left and the left of Bernie Sanders, a lesbian woman married to a queer man.

The details are complicated. She was a whistleblower on the pediatric gender clinic in St. Louis. She's another friend of mine, lifelong left-wing Democrat lawyer from San Francisco, but she said, this has completely transformed my voting patterns, who my friends are, what I think is actually important. I have conversations with people that, again, they'll refer to themselves as atheist left-wingers, I mean, that say, okay, I'm really excited that you're fighting this gender madness. I know you probably have a different view on abortion and marriage. I'm just wondering, give me what your argument is for those things.

This happens. And they actually have conversations and they say, gosh, that's different. Two years ago, I would have thought you were a bigot, but it's clear that you kind of thought this stuff through.

It's, of course, straightforward kind of public reason, natural law arguments for marriage and for the problems with abortion. But people are hearing with different ears. And I think a lot of us that have been in the conservative space for a long time, we're not going to immediately think of these people as potential allies.

But I actually think they are. It doesn't mean they're going to agree with this everything now. It does mean that it gives us something very important to fight about in the public square and to defend. And it also creates an opportunity for longer conversations that we wouldn't have had before. Yeah, it's absolutely true.

And we do need to take advantage of that. You know, Elon Musk reposted this stick figure meme and it went viral. But you know what I'm talking about that he said, actually, he hasn't moved. People think he's gone to the right. He just stayed where he was.

But the left one so far to the left that by staying stationary, it moved him over to the right. And he's speaking out against woke ideology or, you know, interacting with with Mark Cuban about diversity and things like that. You know, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and said, oh, please tell me how many Asian women are on your men's basketball team. You know, if you're just if it's just all about diversity so that the emperor has no clothes and more and more people are seeing that. So through the book, through Fight the Good Fight, brand new book, Jay Richards and James Robison, how an alliance of faith and reason can win the culture.

We're holding it right in my hands for those watching. You talk a lot about the gender ideology issues, that a man is not a woman was not a man. One can't become the other. Why is that so important for us to have as a major talking point for this alliance of faith and reason?

Well, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it is about as foundational as it can possibly be, because you're talking about what is a human person? Are we just sort of gendered souls trapped in skin suits that we can cast off our bodies?

Are we creatures made in the image of God, spiritual and material, bodily creatures that immunity? What is reproduction? What is a family for? Why are we separated, male and female? So we're all human, but some of us are male and some are female. That's the most fundamental cultural and moral questions that we have. Everything sort of emerges from that because the family is the fundamental unit, fundamental cell of our social body. And so that's why people say, you know, this is sort of reoriented my thinking. If it was just, OK, well, I really am more supportive of nuclear power plants than wind.

Right. That's not the kind of thing that's going to restructure people's orientation. But I meet people now that maybe five years ago were donors to Planned Parenthood. They didn't believe in God.

They were all for same sex marriage. But this they said, OK, something completely insane is happening in our culture. And it becomes an occasion for them to say, OK, wait, this didn't come out of nowhere.

This came from somewhere else. This is a part of, as I would describe it, a series of philosophical movements and then the sexual revolution. It's sort of the distillation of all those bad things.

Finally, clear for people. And so that's why in some ways it seems strange. But when God allows a culture to see where they're going ahead of time, what a catastrophe it is. That's a moment of grace in which we're given an opportunity to rethink and to repent as a culture. And I really think that's the moment we're in.

Yeah. And that's part of awakening, isn't it? That people's eyes start to be open. It needs to start in the church. We need to lead the way.

But it happens in the culture around us. You know, you think of of liberal Jews in America, which would be the majority of Jews in America. They're having an awakening now realizing the the corrupt ideology that's been taught on these campuses. Now they realize that there's anti-Semitism on the left. It's probably even more dangerous than the anti-Semitism on the right.

It's been kind of an awakening. Or, you know, when you mentioned the family and you use the cell word, I'm thinking of your colleague Stephen Meyer on Joe Rogan show or Abigail Shrier on Joe Rogan. So here's a guy, you know, known for his profane speech. I mean, obviously very super popular. The world's biggest podcast smokes pot on the air sometimes hallucinogenic. It's all good, right? And he's saying this target with the tuck bathing suits.

That's weird. And do you think now that that I don't know Joe Rogan personally at all, but you think that this is like an example of how people are looking at the craziness of society? And it's now opening them up to God related issues in general? I think it absolutely is. I mean, Joe Rogan, do you get the perfect example? Of course, Abigail Shrier, her stuff stands on its own two feet.

But, you know, the madness of surgery, gender surgery with minors. But three hours of Steve Meyer in his book, The Return of the God Hypothesis with Joe Rogan. I mean, it's very, you know, once you get down to these foundational questions, what is the family? What is the human person?

What is human nature? You're just pretty darn close to theology. And for a lot of people, like you mentioned that the famous cartoon that must be tweeted, actually, it was actually written by my friend Colin Wright, who is an atheist, evolutionary biologist, describing his own awakening. His awakening is just based on, well, you know, we know biologically that there are males and females.

That's throughout the plant and animal kingdom. Right? He's seeing the light that he's been given. It's sort of, I think, a Paul in the Book of Romans that, you know, the Gentiles have the law written on their heart, even though they have not the law. You know, if you're trained in science, you're looking around, there's some stuff you know that it's not theological, but it's certainly adjacent to the thing that we believe is Christians. And so for them to see us fighting and defending this sort of socially costly battle with them, that gives us, I think, as believers, it gives us some credibility and an opportunity for them to say, you know, these people aren't clearly bigots. I mean, they thought through this stuff.

And I just think, you know, honestly, that's just an amazing moment that we're in. And honestly, Michael, it took me getting into the gender ideology fight fully to really see how this was happening. That's how we write the book. We write a book about all the issues, not just this. We talk about, you know, immigration and God in the public square. How should we think about these things as Christians? But then what kinds of arguments can we make on these things for sort of a broad public consumption? Yeah. And start just the foundations of all foundations, male, female.

He created them. All right. So much in this book. We'll be back a few more minutes with Dr. Jay Richards. Fight the good fight. It'll inspire you.

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Get on the Line of Fire by calling 86634TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. My guest is Dr. Jay Richards, co-author of the brand new book, Fight the Good Fight, how an alliance of faith and reason can win the culture war.

Jay Richards and James Robison, co-authors. Jay, what does it mean to win the culture war? Well, so winning the culture war, I would say what it means is that the leading institutions are recognizing and ideally actually speaking the truth on fundamental questions. And of course, we've talked about the most fundamental question, what is the human person? But if you could sort of analyze it politically, what if suddenly the majority of the culture actually thought that the unborn human child ought to be protected by law? What if a majority of the culture came to believe that actually marriage is the institution that sort of ratifies and protects this human capacity to mate, to be fruitful and multiply? That's just what marriage is. Close down the pediatric gender clinics actually have a functioning order, actually respect the public exercise, the free exercise of religion in the public square as opposed to kind of mere belief in our heads.

You can go sort of all down the line. Now, if we say the good fight and we refer to a culture war, we've got to emphasize, we're not talking about a civil war, we're not talking about bombs and guns and tanks, we're talking about arguments and persuasion and ideas and elections. And we need to recognize that we are in that culture war. And that's honestly, Michael, part of the book is just convincing fellow Christians who are maybe squeamish about this. Very often I'll hear from pastors and say, well, I don't want to politicize anything. But I'm like, okay, so would it be politicizing to make a defense of marriage? I mean, you can't have a truce unless both sides agree to a truce.

You're the only one saying that. That's a surrender. That's not a truce.

The other side, they were the aggressors in the culture war. We're just calling Christians and people of common sense to just wake up, realize what's happening and actually join the battle. And of course, that same pastor would say, of course, if I lived in the days of slavery, I would have done something.

Right. Well, here we are with our own massive cultural moral battles. And I tell the pastors too, it's not political, it's pastoral, because the kids in your church are being picked off by this very thing and the families are being affected.

And I speak on many different things when I travel out. But when I am asked to address can you be gang Christian or trans issues and things like that, invariably there is a long line of people wanting to meet with me. Many of them stand and they're crying.

Every one of them with a heart-wrenching personal story. And this is the world we live in. So it's not like we have a choice. We either respond or we are allowing others to disciple our children and to dictate what happens to our freedoms and things like that.

The big question, though, is we come into an election year now. The word that's everywhere is Christian nationalism. And for some, that's a term of honor. For some, that means your white supremacist insurrectionist trying to violently overthrow the government. Do we scrap the term? Do we redefine it? How do we not be paralyzed by the threat of being a Christian nationalist?

Well, so the left is very good because in some ways almost any way you respond, you get sort of stuck in the briar patch. And so either you can say, you know, remember the media spent five years weaponizing this term Christian nationalism. But if you look at what they're describing, it's just very often Christians kind of doing Christian things in the political sphere. Right.

It's just there and stuff. And I guess co-Christian nationalists. So some Christians are like, well, fine, then I'm a Christian nationalist. OK, that's a bad strategy because you don't get to have your private definition of the term if everybody thinks it refers to, I don't know, establishing Christianity as the national church and tormenting unbelievers and white supremacy.

Right. There's no way you're going to benefit from identifying yourself with that term. On the other hand, if you're denouncing it, say, oh, no, I'm not that that they want us doing that, too. And so the trick is, I'm thinking, what do you actually believe? When people ask me that, I say either I make them define the term or I say, well, I actually don't know what that is.

Let me actually tell you what I do think. And what I describe is actually the kind of the found the founders consensus that we're not going to have an established religion at the national level. But Christianity has from the very beginning been a kind of crucial part of the American experiment. We have the natural law that's written on the human heart. We can know by reason that there's a moral law that God exists. That's not sectarian. And the public exercise, the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment means we get to actually exercise in public. We get to bring our faith into the public square and make the case for that and for the ideas that derive from it.

None of that has to do with tormenting people that don't agree with this theologically or any of those kinds of things. I have to think just the system the founders came up with was really good. It worked really well until progressives sort of messed things up working through the courts in the early 20th century. Yes. So again, I start the same as you do. What do you mean by the term? And then say, hey, look, I'm basically doing what you're doing. You come with your set of values or an atheist or a progressive Christian or whatever you want to call yourself or whoever you are. And you advocate for those values in the public square and you vote accordingly. That's what we're doing.

Yeah, exactly. And of course, again, in the book, Fight the Good Fight, you get into this in depth and it's not just theoretical. You're equipping, you're helping people. We've just got a couple minutes left, but with this election year, what are some of the guidelines that you give in Fight the Good Fight so that we can have political involvement without political seduction? Well, the key thing is just you want to ask yourself, OK, what are the fundamental truths of Christianity that actually shape the public square?

What are things that because we are responsible for ourselves and for our neighbors that actually make a real difference? And then honestly, Michael, for a lot of people, I mean, this is like maybe like no other election. Lots of people have real problems with one or both candidates.

You know, they both have very interesting personalities that elaborate on this point. But as you know, I'm here at the Heritage Foundation. I work in Washington, D.C.

I am acutely aware of what it means when one individual is elected as the president of the United States. He or she is one person, but the president that comes in next year in January will appoint five thousand people to the government. These are all the political appointees across every agency, the ones you've heard of and the ones you haven't heard of.

One guy is going to do that. And I can tell you, there are thousands of people that served in the previous administration that are waiting in the wings to fill these agencies. You don't like the personality of a particular person you think you maybe need to vote for. Don't think so much about them. Think about who they will be appointing into the federal government. Yeah, it's great, great wisdom there. And again, it's politics is not the gospel. Politics can't save a soul or transform a sinner into a saint or deliver an oppressed person.

But it does play a very important role. And if we're going to complain about the laws and the judges and where things are going and open borders and everything. So we get to participate.

Hey, one minute left. But the standard question I get asked it on author interviews all the time. What are you hoping that readers will get out of fight the good fight? I want readers first of all just to be encouraged that we're at a moment of potential cultural awakening that we're at an inflection point things don't have to always get worse and worse cultures and civilizations turnaround.

So that's the first thing have hope. And then second, join the fight but before you join the fight kind of learn the issues. That's what we wanted to do in 60,000 words for people they can't study these things were the basic things you need to know and then one of the arguments that you can make with fellow believers and then also with your next door neighbor that doesn't share your theological views.

That's what we're going to do in a single volume. Yeah, so it's great book, and you get the expertise of Jay Richards all the knowledge and practical wisdom you get the inspiration of James Robison fight the good fight. You know it's interesting earlier this same month my book turn the tide how to ignite a cultural awakening came out so we are we are thinking in the same ways and and to me God is saying now is the time hey it's always a delight speaking with you. Thanks so much for your time really appreciate it Jay. Thank you Mike. All right, God bless.

That was Dr. Jay Richards, again, colleague of mine on the stream, and my dear friend, James Robison fight the good fight. And you know I just got the physical copy of the book, and I'm thumbing I would read more of it. Look at the chapter train up a child thing isn't that interesting. I've got a lot in my turn the tide book about the importance of children, and the next generation. Hey, it is one of those moments, let's grab hold of it.

You can call me about anything under the sun 866-348-7884. Hey friends, Michael Brown here, my delight to serve as your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity, we are living in such urgent times today friends that all of us are in the line of fire. There's a target on your back there's a target on my back. If you simply seek to live by biblical values, or just conservative moral values, you could be canceled, you could be cast out, you could be put down, you can be silenced. 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, and we are literally touching people around the world, in America, in the nations, in Israel, and together with your help we're going to amplify this voice and spread this movement around the globe. So I encourage you go right now to thelineoffire.org, thelineoffire.org, click donate monthly support, thelineoffire.org click donate monthly support. When you do you become a torchbearer, we immediately send you two great life changing books, we immediately give you access to many classes I've taught, others have to pay to take those, you get them for free.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks, friends, for joining us on the Line of Fire. Phone lines are open. Any subject of any kind you want to talk to me about, disagree with me about, I'll grab some calls before the hour is out.

866-34-TRUTH, 866-34-87884. So just talk to Jay Richards about his book, Fight the Good Fight, my book that just came out a few days ago, Turn the Tide, How to Ignite a Cultural Awakening. They're totally different books in terms of different content, different spirit, different style, but similar in terms of the same theme that things can change. Things can change. America is not just going in one direction only. The world is not just going in one direction only.

There are counter tides at every moment. There are things that God is doing. There are things that the world is doing. There are things that Satan is doing. All these things are happening at one and the same time. So on the one hand, we can point to the precipitous moral and spiritual decline of America in many ways.

And it's like free fall. I was doing an interview earlier with James Robinson's son Randy about Turn the Tide, an online interview, and he was saying, hey, he doesn't recognize America anymore from what it was 20, 30 years ago. And I said, look, I have students in ministry schools where I teach and they're in their early 20s and they say they don't recognize America from what it was four or five years ago. So we could easily point to the rapid, precipitous, terrifying slide, chaotic slide down the slope of moral and spiritual anarchy in America without question. At the same time, let's remember that we got rid of segregation.

I'm 69 in my lifetime that Roe v. Wade was overturned in our lifetime, that many positive things have happened as well. So I want to read a couple of testimonies from my book, Turn the Tide, How to Ignite a Cultural Awakening. And this was a report I received August 1st, 2023 from a church that I have worked with and know these folks very, very well, know the people intimately involved with this story. For the last year and a half, we have been invited into a local public middle school. This is a church where I speak regularly and teach monthly at their leadership school. So students from the leadership school are directly involved with this. So for the last year and a half, we have been invited into a local public middle school. This school was rated one of the worst in the state. Many of the families represented at the school are either involved in drug, human trafficking or incarcerated.

Some kids are homeless. Many of the teachers deal with fights in the schools and classrooms multiple times a week. I repeat, this is a middle school. The principal invited students from the leadership school into the lunch periods for building relationships and discipleship for the seventh and eighth graders. We have seen over 100 students give their lives to Jesus just during lunch. We have also seen healings and miracles break out. One kid that came to lunch with crutches no longer needed them after he received prayer. At the lunches, we invite the students to our Bible Club that we host at the school after school on Fridays. At the Bible Club, we have seen kids say filled with the Holy Spirit and set free. At the close of the Bible Club this year, we held baptisms off site in a nearby church parking lot. Also, since we have gotten involved in the school, we have seen many of our church members and leadership school students become faculty members at the school.

We're just getting started because this upcoming year, we have a second middle school opening up its doors to us. We are expectant that God is moving in power to radically save this generation. I mean, this is happening. I know the people involved firsthand.

I'm just looking for one other, yeah, here, just another example. While I was working on this section of the book, I was in Tübingen, Germany, for a series of meetings with some dear friends based there. A young man in the congregation named Florian Kubach approached me.

Years earlier, he had driven me around when I was in Germany. He presented me with a book he had written titled, Crossing Boundaries in Early Modern England, Translation of Thomas A. Kempis' De Imitatione Christi, so the Imitation of Christ, 1500-1700. He wrote in English as a German PhD student at a German university. The book is based on his doctoral dissertation, and although Florian is German, it is written in excellent English. He also held in his hand a copy of my 2022 book, The Political Seduction of the Church, in which I also spoke of our need to get more involved in the education system. In the front of the book, so his book, he wrote this to me, Dr. Brown, you are a great inspiration for me to pursue my PhD and thus, quote, position myself more deeply in education, quoting from Political Seduction. Thank you for your great example of wisdom and being on fire for God. He's now teaching in a high school in a city, following God's calling on his life to be salt and light in the public school system. May the Lord multiply men and women like Dr. Florian Koopsch, I pronounced his name incorrectly initially, Dr. Florian Koopsch around the globe.

Hey, if you happen to see this, Florian, you know the big smile on my face. Why not you? Why not your church? If a church in Texas could be called by a public school, we need help.

Send us help. Sit with our kids during lunch, talk to them. If they want to talk, talk to them freely.

You can do it. Invite them to Bible clubs after school hours. They want to come to faith, baptize them off site. If they can happen in public schools, why not your community? If Florian, driving me around, gets inspired, he wants to do something in his life in education, the first one that, as far as he knew in his church, to get a PhD.

And he goes on with this brilliant work, presents me with the book derived from his doctoral dissertation, written in English, in Germany, and then is now a public school teacher because he wants to position himself more in the secular world. As a Christian, why not you? We all have a role to play. We all have a mission. We all have a purpose.

Why not you? And yes, get Fight the Good Fight, get Turn the Tide. I think these books will be a great one-two punch. 866-3-4 truth. Here, we got a letter. I was really touched by it. For some reason, I don't think I read it on the air until now.

I had it in a different office and then just brought it in. It's been over to my right for a while. I just looked at it and thought, I want to read this to you.

I want to encourage you. This is handwritten and it's from a prisoner, an inmate, but it's signed by a bunch of brothers. So Adam wrote it, but it's signed by Adam, Daniel, Brandon, and brother Porkchop. Maybe I read this when it first came in, but I want to read it again.

My name is Adam, because this is his full name. I am a Christian in prison. I'm writing on behalf of about 20 believers here at their prison.

My mother sent me a book by R.T. Kendall with a foreword by Dr. Brown. This book convicted me of my sin and brought me to Jesus. I have since received a filling of the Holy Spirit.

I ordered most of R.T.'s books and Dr. Brown's as well. The prison here does not offer any religious services, but we decided to meet on our yard time and God moved in a spectacular way. Many of our brothers were convicted of sin and reputed and, let's see, repented during a time of prayer.

Dr. Brown's books are being passed around and read, and we are actively seeking for more of God and revival. It is a sad reality that a lot of Christians in prison are sex offenders and drug addicts. We are often, we are all open about our crimes, something unheard of in prison, and we desperately want God. We would like you to pray for us.

And it goes on from there. And of course we reached out and we will reach out again to see how we can help. In prison, God is reaching people. And these men are now meeting during yard time and praying together. And what did he say? God is moving spectacularly.

Yes. And they are open about their sin and their crime. He's saying in prison, many deny it or I don't deserve to be here or it's the system that got me. He's saying we're very open because they've been free.

They're clean. The guilt is not hanging over them. And friends, by God's grace, our materials are being used in prison. I was participating in a forum yesterday. I spoke about anti-Semitism in church history and today and the churches need to stand with Israel.

And of course this does not mean standing against the Palestinians. We always lay that out clearly. And after I spoke, a Jewish man got up to me to speak afterwards with his organization. And he wanted to thank me for something I had written and for the radio show that he had read and watched. So our materials are getting out. Things are happening.

And I'm just giving you one tiny little thimble full of an ocean of reports that we get. And I'm just one little person with one little ministry and we're all just little people with little to offer. But God wants to work through all of us. I want to encourage every one of you, not just hype, not just because I'm a positive, upbeat person, but with seriousness as one who sounds the alarm, as one who pushes that wake up alarm button all the time, who seeks to raise his voice like a trumpet saying, wake up, it's time, it's time. I want to say again, God is at work. Things are happening in the midst of the madness and the moral and spiritual decline. Eyes are being opened. We've told you for many, many years the left will overplay its hand.

We're seeing it happen. I want to invite you to help us get this message out around America. And picture this in your mind. Picture dominoes falling, falling, and they represent schools, they represent families, they represent the moral and spiritual climate of America. Dominoes falling, falling, falling all over the nation.

And then pop, back up, popping up, up, up, up, up, up, and then just having this revolutionary impact. I believe we're going to see that happen in our day and that we're in the early stages of it. And by disseminating this message and shouting it out to the nation, we can see this happen more and more. So partner together. Let's join on the front lines together. You see, I don't have the platform you have and I'm not like called to controversy like you are.

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Click donate monthly support. I'm Paul Burnett, a board certified doctor of holistic health and I want to introduce you to Trivita's multi collagen formula. If there was ever a message I would want the world to hear, it would be about the importance of supplementing the body with its most abundant protein known as collagen. Studies have shown multiple health benefits by supplementing with collagen. Trivita's multi collagen formula does not have just one or two types of collagen or even three. But five forms of collagen shown to support healthy tendons, ligaments, skin, hair, nails, bones, muscles, gut lining and even the arteries and veins.

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Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Welcome back to the line of fire. I just was looking at emails from Germany earlier today. My book, Authentic Fire, which is what? Eleven years old. My response to Pastor MacArthur's Strange Fire. Just coming out in German.

What a cool cover it is. All right. Anything you want to talk to me about, any subject under the sun, 866-348-7884. And shout out to our awesome co-sponsors Trivita together with you, our supporters. They help us on the air and they are so generous. Give you a 25% discount and then 100% of your first order is donated to the line of fire.

So just check out whatever you're interested in. Worst case scenario, you made a donation to the ministry, but I think you will really benefit by these supplements and money back guarantee anyway. So call 800-771-5584, part of my daily regimen with joy.

800-771-5584 or go to trivita.com and then use the code BROWN25. Okay. Let us go over to Kurt in Oklahoma.

Welcome to the line of fire. Hi, Dr. Michael Brown. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay.

Thank you for taking me. It's Oregon, but... Yeah, you know, no, it is. Here's the deal. It's just my nearsightedness that even though we have this giant screen for me, I couldn't tell if it was okay or OR. But now that I look again, it's definitely, you know, looks like an OR. But I'm going to take your word for it because you're there. So... No worries.

Thanks. So I just had a really quick question. It's kind of a three-part question. It has to do with the divine name, so Yahweh. So I'm just curious to your opinion whether Yahweh applies equally to all members of the Trinity or if it's just the Father.

And kind of related to that is when Jesus is fulfilling Old Testament prophecy that relate to Yahweh, is He doing it as Yahweh or as Yahweh's agent? And then finally, are evangelical scholars agreed on this across the board mostly? Or is there a lot of...is this one of those there's no real consensus on this? So just kind of curious your thoughts.

Yeah. So to answer in reverse order, I can't say what evangelical scholars as a whole or consensus would hold to simply because I haven't tried to read everything that's been said on this but evangelical scholars. But my view would be that there is general consensus on the main themes as I'll explain because they're kind of self-evident. But other nuances of the question are not necessarily asked so you can't say what the consensus is because we don't have enough examples of people addressing it.

Your second question is the easiest to address. That there are times when messianic prophecy clearly refers to Yahweh's son, the king in Jerusalem, or to an agent of Yahweh, some type of intermediary figure who himself carries the divine nature. There are some passages like Zechariah 14 that the Lord Himself, His feet will touch that on the Mount of Olives which we know is a prophecy of the return of Jesus.

And Acts 1 says as He left the Mount of Olives so He will come back. So that is a literal prophecy of God coming and He's coming in the person of His son. But most other appearances of the Lord, for example in Exodus 3, the Lord appearance of the burning butch, so that's the malach, the messenger of the Lord.

And so it's an agent, an angel, a messenger. The prophecies over the son who will rule and reign from Jerusalem in Psalm 2 or Psalm 110 that Yahweh says to my Lord sit at my right hand. So the majority would be referring to the Messiah coming as an agent of Yahweh yet Himself divine, which is part of the mystery of God's complex unity.

You know the passages like Malachi 3, the Lord Ha'adon will come to the temple speaking of a divine visitation. But the majority would be the agent, the messenger, the son, the one that comes forth from the Father. As to Yahweh and God's triune nature, on the one hand God is God, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, therefore Father, Son and Spirit can corporately be identified as Yahweh or individually. However, generally speaking, Yahweh is more associated with the Father than the Son and hardly ever associated directly as the Spirit without identifying the Spirit as the Spirit. So, as I referenced for example, Psalm 110, ne'um Yahweh la-doni, the utterance of Yahweh discerning my Lord and that my Lord is the Messiah there. And in Psalm 2, Yahweh said to me, you are my son, today I have given you birth. Ha-yum-li-ti-cha.

So, most of the time Yahweh is primarily associated with the Father, sometimes with the Son, sometimes just to God generally, as to Yahweh's name explicitly being associated with the Spirit, without the Spirit being referenced, I'm not aware of that and I don't know what context where that would really occur. I don't know if you have anything in mind in that regard. No, that answers my question. I was, yeah, appreciate it. Yeah, you bet, sure thing.

Appreciate it very much. 866-34-TRUTH. You know, so, again, I open up the phones to talk about anything under the sun and so it's a great under the sun question and always very interesting. But, to me, it's a reminder of everything working together as one. In other words, we love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our strength. We don't turn off our brain because we're believers. We don't disconnect from our heart and we're intellect only because we're thinkers. We love God with heart, mind, soul, strength, with all of our being.

And, the same way we serve God in this world with all of our being. You know, sometimes we want to make a separation between spirit, soul, and body based on 1 Corinthians 5.23. So, a trichotomous view of human being, right? Spirit, soul, body. And, it's accurate in terms of accurately describing our inner being as spirit and soul, the outer being as body. It's accurate. It helps us diagnose things and understand this is just the soulless realm. This is not really the spirit. This is more a physical appetite.

It helps us to diagnose things in a good way. I'm all for that. However, we are single human beings. In other words, right now, I'm speaking to you, spirit, soul, body. If there was no body, you would not be hearing anything, right? If there was no spirit, I'd be deceased. If there was no soul, there'd be no mechanism for thinking and feeling in this body. So, we are whole, single human beings. In the same way, it's not just there's the knowledge of God, theology that's over here, and then there's practical outworking of our faith over here.

No, it's both and. We are here to know God and make Him known. We are here to be disciples and make disciples.

Please hear me. It's very, very important that we grasp this. If your theology does not have a practical outlet, if your theology doesn't result one way or another in reaching the lost and winning the lost and making disciples, then something is wrong with your theology. Because it's never just abstract.

It's never just, it often is abstract because it's out of line. But from God's perspective, knowing who He is, understanding Him, always has a practical outlet and a practical impact and a practical effect. It's never simply theological knowledge.

Jesus says in John 17, as He's praying to His Father, and this is eternal life, not this is the way to eternal life, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus the Messiah whom you've sent. That knowing God now brings a relationship that brings eternal life. So it's not just abstract theology. If that's what you're engaging in, it does not have a practical outlet where you end up loving God, loving your neighbor, where you end up growing closer to Him and becoming more like Him, then something is defective, something is bankrupt there in that theology. Even if you're calling this to be a teacher, it's ultimately not just abstract, it's to see the body healthy so we can go out and glorify the Lord. And in the same way, if you think you can disconnect from theology because you're just about the work of the Lord, well, who is the God you're introducing people to?

And what is the Bible that you're teaching them and from whence does it come? I just want to read this to you from Jeremiah. This is a fascinating passage. Jeremiah 9, this is what the Lord says. Let not the wise boast of their wisdom, or the strong boast of their strength, or the rich boast of their riches. But let the one who boasts boast about this, that they have understanding to know me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth, in these I delight. So glory that you know the Lord. And then who is this Lord that you know? What does he do?

What is he about? And if I can just grab this one more verse in Jeremiah chapter 22. Oh, can I get there? He says, Does it make you a king? Challenging, Jeconiah, to have more and more cedar. Did not your father have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. Jeremiah 22, speaking of Josiah. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me? declares the Lord.

Wow! He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me? Isn't that fascinating? That doing good in this world is a reflection of knowing God. If we really know him on that level, on some level, we will be people of action. That's why Jay Richards and Jay Robinson wrote, Fight the Good Fight. That's why I wrote, Turn the Tide. Let's Arise and Act.