 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, go to nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 180, continuing the NAR conversation with Dr. Michael L. Brown. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, how are you? Very good. Very good. And just like the episode title describes it, we're going to continue what we started last time with Holly Pivock, the criticisms of the new apostolic reformation and her sharing her concerns. Now we're going to get a little bit of perspective on the other side to someone who's in it and sees positives and certainly some negatives too. And personally, I haven't been exposed to anything NAR really, and I got an email from somebody was talking about another subject. They sent me a link to a video, which is the Bethel music. I noticed that it was some of the music, and I know some of the people having great conversations on our Facebook group, if you're not in there, you need to get in there, having great conversations about the Bethel's music and things of that nature. So I played the video and I loved it. You know, I have never really, I'm not that big of a fan of, quote, worship music, I guess, label it ass. And I know at my own church, I poo poo the music a lot because the songs are like 12, 15 minutes long, we got to stand and six words over and over again. Yes. And soon as I think that one song is over, right into another song, Mike, the last service I went to, it's been a while was 45 minutes of standing up and there was nothing but singing. And this is like, I don't got time to sit here through 45 minutes of songs. Are you saying ain't nobody got time for that? Yeah. Now, and so I'm just not a big fan of worship music. But having said that, Mike, I listened. So I started listening to that. Granted, I didn't listen to all the Bethel music. I know they're very popular, but I absolutely loved it. I mean, I got goose bumps on some of it. I couldn't tell you what was I'm about the most unmusical person on the face of the earth. Well, maybe somebody like born in the Antarctic or something. I'm going to tell you, I can see what the hype's about. Bethel music is awesome. Granted, I can see the appeal. What's scary? You know, I don't know if the scary is the right word, but I can certainly see the appeal of how music is drawing in younger crowds. And then also, I haven't seen a lot of them, but I watched another video and they started kind of tying in some gifts like healing and things like that. And so I could see some of the danger. I don't know if danger is the right word, but I could see how you could mix some of the NAR or just charismatic influence into the music and just through. Yeah, you can you can mix. Yeah, mix anything. Yeah, I can see where it's a doorway into that into those thought processes and how it could potentially be abused. But I haven't said all that. I think personally, you know, I'm so grounded in my faith. I can I can still enjoy the music and not feel like I'm being brainwashed or or like the, you know, the piper leading the children out. You know, I don't feel like I'm just great. Now you may now you make me want to listen to it just to sort of, you know, have that conspiratorial perspective. But again, I I am so unmusical. I get mocked all the time at home because like I have like 11 songs on my I to my iPhone. And, you know, it's just you know, they could they could pass out. You know, the nation could pass a law outlawing music and church and I wouldn't bat an eye. You know, it's just that that's the way it is. But yeah, I don't listen to worship music either. And let me tell you, I loved it, you know, from the limited sample that I took. And I know people some criticized about their lyrics and whatnot. I get all that. But I'm spiritually mature enough to know what's what. And having said that, all things being equal, I can enjoy worship music. And even if they're introducing some NAR stuff or whatever it might be, if you don't agree with, I can still appreciate it because it's not like it's not like baptizing a Madonna song. Is that, you know, and I've actually heard I get my kids reporting to me stuff they've heard like that was so and so song. And I heard that before. I knew what that song was and it was in church. What are they doing? So it's not like that. No, no, this is all original. Because again, I'm not I'm not musically informed enough to know if my kids are just making, you know, yanking my chain or if they're like alarmed and telling me that you know, then this isn't this isn't our church. This isn't, you know, where we go to Grace and Bellingham. But, you know, my kids tend to go to lots of different things, you know, youth rallies and groups and whatnot. And I've heard some strange stuff. Just put that one. Yeah. And so that's what I'm interested about this whole in our conversation. And hopefully Dr. Brown can squash some of the fears that we have out there because after seeing the music, I love it. But I get, you know, I say the same way. People poo poo, Joe Olstein, you know, I'll listen to some of his stuff. I'm like, yeah, I love that stuff. That's right. You know, amen. And it makes you makes you feel good. Yeah. And there's a place and a time for all of that stuff. Well, I'm expecting Mike to be halfway between Holly and me or something like that. Or I'll put it the other way around. I'm going to be halfway between Holly and Mike. Yeah, that's the correct way to put it. So, yeah. But yeah, I'm glad that he has decided to come on board here and talk to us. So we should get him up here now and begin the discussion. Well, it's great to have Michael Brown on the Naked Bible podcast. I've been on Mike's show a couple of times and he's been very kind and gracious helping to promote unseen realm and just, you know, just have some good discussion about biblical theology, the biblical text. And, you know, didn't really imagine, you know, I'd get you on this show, Mike, as quickly as this. But I think the circumstances are good, you know, to help further the discussion, to have a sort of a balance to the earlier interview with Holly. And just thanks for being on here. My joy to be with you. Yeah, great. Hey, I want everybody to hear part of the email I sent to Mike as preparation for this. I gave him a heads up, you know, after the earlier interview since he was mentioned in that interview. And again, I've known Mike for a while. We've only, we've met for about seven seconds face to face and that was there before. But, you know, we've spent time corresponding with each other and of course I was on his show as well. So I wanted to give him a heads up but here's part of what I sent to him. I have some personal thoughts in here and then sort of to help him, help give him some context for what we wanted to do here. And I wrote, the NAR has a lot of wackiness going on but also a lot of sincere people in it. Holly admitted the latter, although, you know, it was pretty brief because she thinks the wider, you know, thing movement is dangerous. I think she has a point, but I'm also sure there are a lot of good people who are touched by this in some way that don't give the organizational structure or agenda a second or even a first thought. For me, the dangers are, number one, the authority claims related to networks of churches. Number two, theonomy talk, which is certainly not isolated to the new apostolic reformation. And three, defining one's relationship with God by gift performance versus character and faithfulness. I've seen the latter destroy people personally more than once. Historically, we've sort of seen number two happen, you know, the theanomic idea. Church state marriages don't work out terribly well. In a nutshell, I have a low view of people who use the Bible or the cross to manipulate others or who conflate the kingdom of God with political power and influence. But I don't really care too much about the gifting issues. I have problems with some of the gift talk, how you can hold classes to teach people how to do miraculous kinds of gifts, which I don't see in the New Testament or the techniques of spiritual warfare involve things like dancing and using tambourines and whatnot, and I actually did see that a few days ago. But I'm quite open, you know, God can do what he wants, when he wants and with who he wants to do it. So I'm not your classic cessationist. I actually don't think that the terms mean a whole lot anymore. They just don't allow nuancing. Now we got into this, that's essentially the end of what I sent to Mike. We got into this a little bit in this past week's livestream. I did a livestream with my friend, Rich Baker. We read a coffee house in town. And Rich has been in the major NAR and cat asthmatic conferences and lots of churches associated with both NAR as they would affiliate with NAR in some way or those who don't. And, you know, he actually helped organizationally with some of those. And so he knows some of the major figures and talked really positively about them. So if you haven't watched the livestream, you should. He's also seen a lot of crazy stuff, but also a lot of good people, you know, who want to serve the Lord and are actively doing so right now. And I'm the same though my experience is limited. This audience knows, of course, I spent a lot of time, you know, in what I affectionately call Christian Middle Earth. And within that orbit, there are a lot of people who would be, you know, in the charismatic circle. Most of them would probably not have heard of the NAR because I've actually asked a few and gotten blank expressions a lot. But, you know, I enjoy them and I like my time in Middle Earth and you've heard me talk about this before. I might be talking to a person and think that the idea they're asking me to consider doesn't have a prayer of being correct. But if they're not harming the gospel, if they're not deluding it, defaming it, you know, driving people away from faith and preaching another gospel, their heart's in the right place. You know, I'm just not going to reign on their parade. I'm not going to, you know, create an antagonistic sort of relationship. The thing that really again concerns me is when people take something they're passionate about and they elevate it to the level of the gospel or they force it on other people. I'm not going to name a name here, but I know of someone who was doing a TV show, a show that is absolutely, you know, having really important figures from the New Apostolic Reformation on it. And right before the show, the host ambushed this guy and said, well, I can't have you on unless you speak in tongues. And so the guy like peppered him, well, just say this and say that, you know, do these syllables and that, you know, and the guy felt cornered and he just, you know, blathered something. Okay, you're good now. That's just a barrant doctrine. That's spiritual abuse. This wasn't me personally because my answer would have been, well, then you can fill my empty chair because we're done here. That's the kind of thing that I don't like to see. I care that, you know, people aren't lorded over and I don't want to see doctrine shelved in favor of experience, but that isn't to deny that God can do things experientially. So we wanted to have, you know, Mike on because he is, you know, linked into this tradition in some way, but I want to let him sort of tell us what that means. So as we get started here, Mike, what, you know, how would you define all this stuff? I mean, what is the gnar to you and how do you articulate the difference between that term and Pentecostals, Charismatics, then you're, you know, any other, you know, adjective you care to throw in here? Yeah, sure thing. And it's great to have this time to talk. When I was a boy, we traveled across the country as a family, my sister and I and my mom and dad. And I remember we were in Texas and my dad ordered a New York cut steak. And I remember he said, I lived in New York all my life and I've never seen a New York cut steak. In other words, in Texas, they thought there was such a thing, but as a lifetime New Yorker, he never heard of it. So commonly when people attack me about the NAR or whatever and charismatic Pentecostal circles, which I've been in for the better part of the last 46 years, no one's heard of it, no one knows what in the world you're talking about. So this idea that there is this thing that's controlling all these churches, a DVD just came out and said they have oversight over 300 million people worldwide. That's a complete myth. That's basically like the Nifilim or the Illuminati and they rule everything. And Michael Heiser is the honorary president to the whole thing. No, no, I'm a Jesuit. Get it right. Oh, sorry, sorry. Okay. Now, I mean, I get called everything day and night. I am, by the way, an apostle and a leader in the NAR. And then my great sin is that I deny it on top of it. And anyway, let me say a few things. Number one, the charismatic movement spreading around the world is the greatest harvest of souls in the history of the church in terms of numbers of people coming to faith around the world. Many church historians, missiologists will attest to that. Number two, there are lots of abuses, lots of errors, especially as it spread very rapidly. And if you're in, say, a kind of a Baptist tradition, Presbyterian churches, a lot of the abuses will be spiritual deadness, spiritual coldness. A lot of the abuses in the charismatic side will be loud outward spiritual abuses. So those exist. I can tell you what I've written to address abuses about a book I have coming out next year that addresses abuses. I'll gladly tell you about that. But when it comes to quote the NAR, as I understand this, this is associated with Dr. Peter Wagner. Now, long before I ever heard of Peter Wagner, I concluded based on scripture that there were small apostles and prophets that continued to minister based on Ephesians four, based on 1 Corinthians 12. And that they've been with us through church history, even if we didn't call people by that name. In my mind, a Hudson Taylor would have been an apostolic leader going to plant a new territories and a spiritual father that gave birth to many of the works. And there are people, I look at a man like Al Moller who's a non-charismatic as being a prophetic voice in the body today. And again, he's a non-charismatic, perhaps even anti in that way. So I believe those things, just based on my state of scripture and the different circles where I traveled spiritually, many people believed in those. And then Peter Wagner, who's a fuller prophet and very influential, began to write on this. And apparently, because I didn't read a lot of the stuff, pointed to a certain point in time of a transformation and that God was now raising up apostles, et cetera. So I guess that when people talk about the NAR, they're talking about that specific thing. But the guys that I've been friends with over the years, like Cheyenne or Lou Angle or Mike Bickel, that are allegedly part of the NAR. First, I never heard any of them talk about being part of that thing. That's the first thing. Second thing, there's nobody I know in the charismatic movement, nobody I've worked with for decades that's a theonomist. I've never heard the talk in all my years being in these circles. The great majority are not post-millennial, great majority are pre-millennial, many are dispensational. That's the tradition a lot of us got saved out of. And even some of the things you talk about, like going on Christian TV and had them speaking tongues, I mean, I've been on Christian TV many times. I have several shows on Christian TV. One of my friends just took over God TV. I've got plenty of friends that have Christian programs. I can't imagine any of us ever doing that in a million years or the question ever coming up. Now, there are all kinds of views. Some of the craziest, wackiest stuff is on charismatic TV and I'm ashamed of it. It's miserable. And some of the fundraising is all messed up and I've written about it and speak out about it. It's embarrassing. No question. I'm not minimizing that. But the only thing, this last introductory point, the only real abuse or abuses that I've seen among those who associate with various quote, apostolic movements, I think there are several or many, I think. But one is the idea that everybody needs to have an apostle over them. And I think what that comes from is you have a ton of independent charismatic churches that have no denominational affiliation. So there's no order. There's no sense of accountability. There are no senior leaders to go to and there's no network to connect to. So I think it tries to meet that need, which is fine in terms of just looking for spiritual elders. But the other side of it is I've seen that Peter Wagner rightly addressed the issue of the sola pastora kind of thing, that the pastor is everything that's the only real gift today that the pastor is supposed to do everything and that the way we run our church is just kind of a one-man show. I agreed with that. But then it seemed that what he was saying was like, if you have more than one church, then you're an apostle, everybody became an apostle. And everybody put that, not everybody, but tons of people started to identify as apostles. I thought that was an abuse that I have always differed with. So that's my introductory response to a lot of what you put out. That's interesting because the couple of things there, and I'll try to remember to go back to the one to ask a question, but what you just described Wagner as reacting to, see, that was what I grew up in, the sort of one-man show kind of thing. And I wanna be clear here, again, my initial spiritual tradition when I came to the Lord as a teenager was fundamentalism. And you see a lot of that kind of thing where nothing can happen in the church unless it crosses over my desk, that sort of leadership, but I wanna be clear. I look back on my past in those things. And I think that it had more benefits than liabilities as far as my own spiritual upbringing, but I did see things like that that I came to view as heavy-handed and just spiritual abuse. I mean, I could go a long time with a lot of stories like that. So if you're framing Wagner, because I haven't read, see Peter Wagner either, I mean, why would I go out and read charismatic guys if I'm in this other strain of Christianity? But if that's what he's reacting to, yeah, that deserves a reaction and a rebuke. I mean, I would certainly agree with that. And it probably is part of why I really, I take the priest of the believer pretty seriously. I don't see the need to have a hierarchy of men telling us things that the Spirit of God could just prompt us to do just fine by himself. In other words, I really, I have on my radar a lot, people, and I mean, since movements are composed of people, movements as well, that seem to wanna try to do the Holy Spirit's job for him, not with him. And so I tend to react to that pretty strongly because I've just seen, there's just a trail of wreckage behind that approach to ministry, and it doesn't really matter what label goes on it. And I'm not surprised at all that you've seen that sort of thing, I know I have. So that I'm glad to hear. But the thing that, other thing you said that sort of popped a question in my head was you brought up the fundraising. Is there a relationship between, this is like a Venn diagram, I realize here, I don't know what the proportions are, but prosperity gospel, is that a subset of something within the charismatic movement? Is it something that you would associate with the NAR or it's independent of that? I mean, give us the Venn diagram of these kind of terms because I'm quite unfamiliar with all of that. Yeah, I think I can help there. Okay, number one, remember that I have a real hard time telling you what is NAR and who's part of it. Right. And again, I simply, I don't know, I don't know that it's- Right, unless somebody says, hey, we're on this bandwagon, how would you know? Yeah, or look, again, there are lots of leaders that I work with and some of them, some of my friends would identify, or they really looked to Dr. Wagner, Peter Wagner, they respected a lot and so on. But I never knew them to say that they were part of that thing. So if it's more clearly defined for some, so be it. But no, the fundraising abuses are more of a kind of a classic charismatic thing that may even go back to the healing revival of the 40s and 50s when men like Oral Roberts and T.L. Osborne and their ministries came to national attention. But with that, there were some abuses from different ones. And I think that's been kind of a manipulative thing that's found in some charismatic circles because you believe in the man of God and you believe on the anointing and the man of God and we are people of faith and we step out. But I've not seen that, like all the guys I know that say worked in Peter Wagner circles, which let's put it like that, if that's what Nara is, fine, okay? But let's just say they associated with Peter Wagner circles. No, none of them have been guilty of that nor do they, are they primarily associated with the prosperity message. That came out specifically of the word of faith movement that would be associated with Kenneth Hagan and Kenneth Copeland and people like Creflo Dollar today. So what is that movement in relationship to, is that a subset of the charismatic thing? Yes, subset of charismatic, that's one, not related to NAR, again, as far as I can define it and understand it. But in countries like Africa has been a prominent part of the charismatic movement, although African leaders have told me there's a lot of course correction being made now. In America, it's definitely a subset. But here's the strengths and the weaknesses. The strengths are that a lot of the message reacted against kind of a poverty mentality that there was never any money for the gospel, that there was never money to fund the gospel, that the way that you honored the pastor or the leader was by depriving them of income so that they were always short on money. And the joke when I got saved was that, the pastor's so holy, he has holes in his shoes, and that all the verses, you know them from the Old Testament that associate the blessing of God with earthly riches, or all through the proverbs, that as we honor the Lord with our first fruits, that he honors us, that it would take these verses and then verses in the New Testament that God will make us rich in every way, first Corinthians, second Corinthians, the words of Jesus about giving it will be given to you and things like that. Talk principles of generosity, which are great. Talk principles as give, support the gospel, underwrite missions worldwide, that's tremendous. Some of these word of faith guys are incredibly generous and have given millions of dollars to the gospel. The weakness is it was totally tied in with a carnal mentality that Jesus died to make me rich, that physical riches are a sign of spirituality, that if you really follow Jesus, you won't be poor. So some real aberrant teachings in it, and then some other disturbing things about atonement and stuff, so that there's some that put word of faith, like a hand-cantograph, we put word of faith in the camp of heresy, and I joined in every year at the Southern Evangelical Seminary, they do an annual apologetics conference near Charlotte, North Carolina, that draws thousands of people, and they will often have seminars on word of faith being heretical just like Mormons are heretical. Most of the word of faith people I knew have been clear born again believers who held to the fundamentals of the gospel, but who had an error in terms of earthly riches being a sign of spirituality. Now, that word of faith message then ties in with different types of carnal fundraising. You know, the Lord showed me the number 777, and if you give $777 and sew it into our ministry that you'll get a hundredfold return over to the next year, that kind of nonsense. And that's why we, it's an ugly abuse. I agree with the critics of it, I make no excuses for it, but I don't associate it particularly with NAR guys at all. None of them that I know of are into that. I think that's really helpful. It's helpful for me, it's helpful I think for our audience as well. Because I, like I said, I'm just, I'm way out of this orbit, and when you're way out of the orbit, you know, everything that you hear, you know, it tends to be, it's easy pick as it tends to be all the stuff that's abusive and whatnot. You know, my own Christian life, you know, I've just come to meet other, you know, other believers that are, you know, charismatic or, you know, not just that, but you know, they believe other things that I wasn't raised to believe. And you know, sometimes I've ended up changing my mind, sometimes I haven't, but it's like you just, you appreciate them for, they have their hearts in the right place is how I like to say it. So again, I know enough, you know, people that you're describing just in the broader, you know, charismatic sense that this isn't news, you know, to me, most of the ones I know are just, you know, fine people. And as far as the NAR goes, I mean, you know, there's somebody writing that stuff and there's somebody, you know, writing the material that Holly references and somebody wants it to be a big thing or treats it as a big thing. But to be honest with you, again, I think, you know, I'd like to talk a little bit about what are some of the solutions here? But, you know, for me, just to chime in here because I want to give Mike most of the time here. For me, it's like, I think at least one of the solutions is to not pay attention to movements. That's a little self-serving because I don't, but there are lots of reasons why I don't. But I just think, look, if we're trying to learn scripture, we're trying to develop as disciples, we're trying to do ministry, you know, we have churches that we go to, you know, we find like-minded people within those churches. We hopefully are mature enough to realize that, you know, no church I go to is gonna just, you know, thrill me in every way. And that might be an opportunity to be the thing that I see missing, or at least I can find a few people, again, that are like-minded and, you know, enjoy, you know, fellowship with them, maybe in certain ways that I can't with other people, whatever. But, you know, to me, it's just a mistake to define your relationship with the Lord and what the Lord would have you do, both on a daily basis and sort of in taking the big picture look, you know, in terms of, you know, how you can be salt and light to as many people as possible within the span of your lifetime. That doesn't need to be filtered through a movement. And so I just think that we would be a lot wiser if we kind of focused on our own relationship with the Lord and the people that are there to partner with us and just, you know, do things that need to get done and not, and again, filter, you know, things and not be about fostering or furthering this particular group or movement or set of initials or whatever it is. Now, I'll grant, that's easy for me to do. I know it might not be easy for other people to do, but I don't know, Mike, you know, what do you think about, what do you do just, I guess, intentionally to address the problems and then just sort of setting all of it aside? You know, what's your advice to people just live in their life and trying to do something for the kingdom of God? I mean, how would you talk to somebody about that? Yeah, first, that's where it all starts. It's our own relationship with God, understanding who we are as His children, loved, forgiven in the Messiah, called to serve Him, called to revere Him and be disciples and make disciples. And I only perceive myself as being part of the Jesus movement, the worldwide Jesus movement. So I have dear friends who are charismatic all around the world. I have dear friends who are non-charismatic and I've worked with people for years and didn't even know if they were charismatic or not because we worked together for the cause of the gospel. And it's interesting, I just pulled something up. Peter Wagner wrote in 2011. And he said, the NAR is not an organization, no one can join or carry a card, it has no leader. I've been called the founder, but this is not the case. One reason I might be seen as an intellectual Godfather is that I might have been the first to observe the movement, give a name to it and describe its characteristics as I saw them. And this began to come together through my research in 1993. I was a professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary where I talked for 30 years. The roots of the NAR go back to the beginning of the African independent church movement in 1900. The Chinese house church movement beginning in 1976. The US independent charismatic movement beginning in the 1970s and the Latin American grassroots church movement beginning around the same time. I was neither the founder nor a member of any of these movements. I was simply a professor who observed that they were the fastest growing churches in their respective regions and that they had a number of common characteristics so that they were not, now this is me, not part of a particular denomination. He used post-denominational, that didn't work. So he tried to just come up with a way to describe what he was seeing. So again, it's something that's organic in that respect and that just different churches that function with different understanding than having a centralized headquarters and look more in terms of an organic reproducing movement and that were charismatic. That's what he was classifying. But back to the individual level, it's interesting that when I had Bill Johnson on my radio show, I got a lot of criticism. Of course, a lot of people love him and I got a lot of criticism for it. And he agreed to come on the show and be asked hard questions. I especially put out invitations to those who were critical of Bethel to call in with their criticisms. And some things I asked him because no one called but that was critical. They just had other questions. So what I raised certain questions to him about practices. He goes, no, we don't believe that. We repudiate it. We heard some people were doing it. We teach against it. I said, okay, what about this quote? He goes, yeah, that's my son or son-in-law. He goes, that was misstatement and we regret that he said it. He's corrected it. Okay, how about this? Yeah, that was my daughter and she doesn't use that. In other words, he was totally honest. I said, yeah, I wouldn't have said it like that. I don't agree and responded in a mature, godly way. What's fascinating though is one of my friends spent time with their students in their ministry school there and he said their big emphasis was not gifts but identity in Jesus and being a son or daughter of God. Not being, I have this gift or I have that gift or I have this calling or I have that calling and that that grounded them in security so that there was no competition. You're not being measured by how much you're producing or whether you can heal the sick or prophesy. You're not being measured by a title associated with your name. Rather, your identity is found as being a son or daughter of God and with that identity now you joyfully serve him in whatever capacity he calls you to. Now there's certain things, yeah, I'm sorry. I was gonna say, where did you read that or hear that? Where did you get that information that specifically? One of my colleagues spent some time visiting the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry and he wanted to see what they were doing. He was faculty member at our own ministry school. He roomed with some of the students just to see what they were thinking. He went out to meals with them and what he saw and again, there's certain emphases there. I'm sure I disagree with, for those a lack of understanding of the role of Israel, some other things. And I'm sure as all of us talk, we're gonna have areas of disagreement. That's normal within the body. We each have strengths and weaknesses. But what he found was that there wasn't a sense of competition or a sense of earning something or proving something, rather a security grounded in being in Christ, our primary identity being sons and daughters of God and that we're on a mission. Wherever we go, we're on a mission to share Jesus. Do you happen to remember what year that was? Was that pretty recent? No, he went over there, oh, I would say probably six, seven, eight years ago, but I've had other friends that have been involved there over the years. I think that's pretty steady emphasis. I think that's one of the foundations. Here's why I'm asking. It seems to me, and again, I'm not conversant with any literature that says one way or the other, but it seems to me that people like him, the higher ups that would be associated with the NAR, they have got to know that they've gotta know about the abuses, they've gotta know about the criticism being levied against them. If it was me, I would think, well, we need to produce a book. We need to produce something that articulates just exactly what you just described. And if nothing like that exists, I'd like to know why. Like in other words, why are they not making this clear to both their critics and also to people who are participating within the movement? Because if you don't hear that about the competition and all that kind of stuff, if you don't hear those kinds of things that you need to hear, well, of course, you're gonna have people just veer off into all these areas. And it's interesting you use the word competition because again, without naming any groups or anything like that, one of my, again, I have very few experiences with something that would directly where people would tell me that we're part of this, that or the other thing, but that was a big deal in a negative sense. It just became a kind of a cycle of gifted one upsmanship. And if you didn't come across as a certain kind of person, if you didn't present yourself in a certain way, if you didn't, you know, exercise these quote unquote gifts, then there was just something wrong with you. You know, and that's the kind of thing that really operates in a vicious circle because, okay, I'll do this thing and I'll smile a lot, you know, whatever. And I saw this in fundamentalism that had nothing to do with charismatic stuff. You, there was a certain sort of, there's kind of litmus test, you know, what we look for in someone who's quote committed, you know, to Jesus, okay, really on fire for Jesus. And you start checking the things off and then something else will come along that'll strike somebody's fancy. And then, well, I got to add that to my bag of tricks. I got to make sure people identify me with this thing, this new behavior over here. And it's like a death spiral to some people. It's just, you know, why aren't they, or are they making this clear? Okay. Because it'd be great for everybody to hear what you just said. I mean, we don't have that big of an audience here, but I mean, it would be great to just set that record straight, you know, articulate something. Okay. So what I'm gonna say may surprise you, but I doubt that Bill Johnson and his other guys are even aware that they're criticized in some of these ways. I think it's so foreign to them and so out there. Do you know how many times I have to defend you from being a heretic? I just got another link to email forward it to me. But you, you may know about this because you're area of scholarship, et cetera, I'm serious. I just get someone else writing to me about your dangerous beliefs, et cetera. Now you may know some about this, but the reason you may not clarify certain things, as a scholar you would. I mean, you and I tend to think ahead of what objections are gonna be raised. And I'm not saying this, I am saying this, but most of these guys are completely oblivious to the attacks coming their way. You said, well, they should know, you have to understand most of the critics that are the loudest are so extreme and so ugly. One guy attacked me the other day and it was just forwarded to me. That's how I saw it. And he said to me, you are more dangerous than ISIS terrorists. And when I reached out to him and said, I decided I'm older than him, I'm gonna reach out. I said, hey, I appreciate you being sincere. I think I can help you. He said, if you don't repent of your charismatic beliefs you're gonna burn in the fires of hell. So this stuff is so idiotic, so far-fetched that they don't even bother with it. In other words, one of the values is you don't respond to critics because you just look at it as destructive and it's so ugly and so misrepresentative. Why should I respond to something I don't even believe? Why should I repudiate something that has nothing to do with me? So that's one thing. The second thing is from what I know that that's a primary message that comes out of Bethel about being secure in the love of God. I think that's the primary message that Bill Johnson has written on for years. I've only written snippets of his books but I'm almost sure that's a major theme, the love of God and being secure in him and your identity is found in Jesus, not performance. The last thing is the performance question is a big problem through the whole body for many. You'll find in fundamentalist Baptist circles and in radical charismatic circles and that tends to be a works mentality that if I didn't have a good day and pray enough God doesn't love me as much and if I prayed more he loves me more. And in fact I see a reaction against that that goes too far and what I've written about called hyper grace and say that the primary leader associated that with that would be Joseph Prince and he and I have dialogue face to face and his whole thing would be when you know that you know that you're forgiven by grace and established in grace, you're gonna be holy and love God with all of your heart. That's the response of love because he says sin is destructive and holiness is beautiful but the way to get it is not by hitting people over the head with the Bible but by preaching the love of God to them and I would say amen but it's swung too far. So I think that's a message. Some people have accused Bethel of being hyper grace as well and I don't know that they'd be familiar with that term. It's not something that they used but there is a strong emphasis that your acceptance comes from what Jesus did not what you do. And then based on that now as an accepted believer who's found rest now we run and seek to do the will of God but look there's always a maturity. There's always pressure that someone's gonna feel to conform there are things we do unconsciously that can create that. I'm sure some of the messages I've preached calling people lay down your life for the gospel give yourself to the Lord. They felt some kind of pressure to perform through that. So we all have to do our best to ground people in grace and then from that place of grace call them to serve. Yeah, I would agree. It's just this ubiquitous problem. It is. You know that Christians everywhere are just plagued and they can spit the gospel back to you and get it right. They could pass the exams so to speak but then they're just so they struggle so much with how God looks at them based on performance issues. Sins of omission and commission and all that sort of thing. Yep. Yeah, that's a huge problem. Boy, yeah, we can. All right, well, go ahead. Where else would you like to take the conversation in particular? We'll give you sort of a free reign here. Yeah, sure. Okay, a few things. A specific and someone had sent this to me before you were kind enough to do it. Something that Holly had mentioned. Now, we're going to reach out to her to have her on my show. I'm not questioning her sincerity. It's just when you present things to the people involved and they can't even recognize it. I think something's amiss there and perhaps sometimes as outsiders we don't really understand rightly what's happening on the inside. That's why it's always important to say, hey, have I represented you accurately? Have I understood you accurately? And from the things coming back to me, I question that but she had thought that I taught once at Wagner Leadership Institute and then said no, she was mistaken. I taught elsewhere. Well, I've taught at seven different seminaries from Fuller to Denver Theological Seminary to Trinity. Some of the finest seminaries in the nation had the joy of doing that. I did teach years back once, believe once, maybe twice at the Wagner Leadership Institute. So she was writing and thinking I did. She wrongly corrected herself but that's not a training place for here's how you learn how to be an apostle or here. No, rather Peter Wagner had a lot of issues as a professor at Fuller for decades with a lot of the accreditation associations and a lot of their requirements and their lack of recognizing practical ministry as part of your learning and training. So maybe pastured for 30 years but you came into seminary as if it was just from ground zero. So he tried to come up with a way to accommodate people's schedules more. As I understand it, I was never part of the planning or anything, just taught it once or twice but it was to have a network where you'd have all different cities, intensive modulars taught by recognized professors and then within that they would have their own accrediting, their own accountability in terms of academic credentials and classes and you would get certain amount of credit for years of pastoral experience if you were working towards a D-man or something like that. And if I remember I taught on revival, revival in history what revival is biblically a keys to seeing revival but I never knew of a class where they teach you how to be an apostle or they teach you how to be a prophet or this is specific to quote NAR. You would have been at home in many of the classes those that were more charismatic oriented might have been a bit foreign but otherwise it would have been yeah good stuff like they teach at seminaries they're just making it more fitting where someone's not in a full-time program the same way or having to deal with the rigors of a regular schedule. So that again is kind of a bogus idea and I think the biggest thing that your listeners need to grasp is that around the world for the last 100 plus years there has been a growing movement of people who believe speaking in tongues is for today who believe that healing and miracles are for today. And according again to major church historians there's a new series coming out from Oxford modern church studies and the second volume is called to the ends of the earth and it's about the worldwide growth of the Pentecostal movement. I have a volume that Life Magazine put out in the year 1999 of the thousand greatest people excuse me the hundred greatest people in events of the last 100 years and I believe excuse me the 100 greatest people in events of the last thousand years that's what it was for the millennium from 1000 to 2000. And I think number 68 was the modern Pentecostal outforing. So you're talking about something that it spread massively and that for the most part does not have a specific denominational affiliation for the most part does not just have a you don't have a pope over it or anything like that. And some groups within that Peter Wagner would have identified as having similar characteristics but you have house church movements that are charismatic and Pentecostal you have some that use liturgy that are much more classic and the pastor gets up there and he's called a priest and he wears a robe. You have others who were old kind of camp meeting so it's very broad and wide but all of them would agree on the fundamentals of the Apostles Creed. All of them would agree except for little groups that are aberrant, that are part of the mainstream with the authority of scripture. And I have a chapter in my book Authentic Fire that I wrote in response to John MacArthur's strange fire called Sola Scriptura and therefore charismatic. So for me, my experience has confirmed things I believe but I believe in divine healing I believe in gifts being for today not primarily based on what I experienced but primarily based on what's written yet I know many who identify as cessationists who used to be charismatic and had bad experiences because of which they denied things and I said, well, you're telling me I'm basing things I've experienced I'm basing them on the word and you had a bad experience so you changed your beliefs. So can we look at what the word says? And that's my big issue. The extreme critics, the ones like John MacArthur who obviously has done great good and is a man who's not been associated with scandals and as a serious teacher of the word and a great example in many ways but profoundly differ with him on certain points respectfully so as he's an elder to me he would say the vast majority of charismatic's world water not saved at all that there's no healthy baby in the bathwater that in the strange conference, strange fire conference when he was asked a question head on he said, we're not dividing the body we're trying to identify the body. So that to me is very disturbing and when people look at the worldwide charismatic What's the basis for a claim like that? I've not read strange fire I read years and what is it 30 years now his original book, Charismatics I had to read it for a class but I've not read this recent thing is this a totally new book or is it like a rehash of the old one or what? There's some rehash but it's a totally new book and what happened was as he explained it that he had back surgery and was laid up for a while and ended up watching a lot of Christian TV and that's what prompted and thankfully they're all I guess I can't blame him Listen, I can't either but you have to remember I'm in this I travel around the world and I don't see these abuses in other words, it's the rarest of rare for every bad experience I've had where someone's been abusive with finances or it has been some spiritual primadonna and wants to stay in the penthouse suite hotel for every crazy charismatic TV show 50 churches that aren't doing that or a hundred or a thousand now here's the negative a lot of them still watch the guys and maybe this principle will be helpful to you when I wrote No Authentic Fire I had a chapter about spirit and truth word and power, left brain, right brain and different ways of thinking of things John MacArthur looks at the abuses as being so extreme he looks at them as being so manipulative financially believing in false prophecies teaching things that are aberrant that he cannot see these people being truly born again that I hope I'm summarizing that position correctly now as far as I know he views me as a brother in his book Strange Fire he actually quoted from my 1991 book Whatever Happened to the Power of God which asks the question is the charismatic church slain in the spirit or down for the count so I've been an internal critic and I have a book coming out next year called Playing with Holy Fire so I am an internal critic if someone is saying who's raising their voice I have and I am and I will and point the first finger at myself for self-examination but here's what struck me we each have strength and weaknesses as human beings and within the body and that I think is part of the richness the richness of the body that we need each other so if some non-charismatic is watching Christian TV and it's one of these corrupt fundraisers and he gets the $777 word and there's no way this person's gonna pick up the phone and call absolutely not yet some charismatic the wife may turn to the husband said honey I feel this is the Lord and he said all right let's do it let's get our last $777 so the non-charismatic has a strength of being more circumspect and examining things more based on okay is this a clear testimony according to scripture charismatic has a weakness of gullibility now let's flip it around this the non-charismatic is walking through the mall and sees someone in the wheelchair and feels this strange prompting I should go pray for this person that God will heal them he's not gonna do that that's crazy well the charismatic feels the prompting goes over praise for the person they get healed next thing they're rejoicing there in the mall and they go tell their non-charismatic friend non-charismatic says I don't believe that I don't that obviously is another explanation so the charismatic that has the weakness of gullibility has the strength of stepping out in faith the non-charismatic who has the strength of being circumspect has the weakness of being a cynic and being skeptical so that's where I feel we can help each other that's where I appeal to John MacArthur rather than writing people off help them if the criticism was not so extreme then you could befriend more people and teach them to do expository preaching like you've done teach them to base everything on passages of scripture and not just an inspirational thought here and there and help because there's a massive movement around the world much of it is very, very new and very, very young and therefore needs more discipling but if we think of a first Corinthians Paul never wrote off the Corinthians he said you don't lack any spiritual gift and yet they had immorality they had doctrinal error they had division they had carnality some people were sick others died because of abuses associated with the Lord's table so I think we need to have the same viewpoint thank God for what he is doing it's wonderful it's amazing it's God glorifying around the world I've seen it with my own eyes on over 150 trips ministering outside of the United States and where there are abuses let's do our best to correct them and let's do our best to learn from each other because just like we need scholars right look at how Logos has served the body through making scholarship available in a practical way and eliminated so many exegetical and hermeneutical errors but not everyone's going to be a scholar and then the scholars need the people burning to their last breath to take the gospel to the furthest corner of the earth so we need each other in that regard that's well said I mean I have felt conflicted about exactly what to do but I've kind of landed because of what I write Divine Council, Unseen Realm all this kind of stuff there are a lot of people in the charismatic orbit that are drawn to that material and I've had a number of them say well this is really helpful because there's this crazy idea over here but this really helps me sort that out you know and I'm glad to hear that because my thing is I just want to do something useful I mean I'll go to this or that event I'll you know go to this or that shirt I mean I have a short list of things that I won't do because you know like one of these crazy TV shows you know because if you go on that then it looks like you know you're endorsing it or they can use your appearance to endorse themselves you know all that stuff so I do have a list of places I won't go but but just generally speaking it's like if I can go into that context and people who invite me you know they'll know because I'll tell them like this isn't my context I might not be entirely comfortable with everything but I'm gonna come because I'm gonna do something useful I'm not there to endorse anything you or anybody else I'm just there you tell me what you want me to teach and I'll do that and hopefully that's gonna be beneficial so that's sort of the position I've adopted but I don't necessarily know how to sort of work that out you know how to live that out because I don't know the lay of the land I'm learning you know I'm learning a few things you know along the way but I have the same kind of attitude you know I just wish that you know Christians would get along that we would be secure you know in the gospel this performance thing to me is a huge issue we're gonna disagree you know people tell me you know I read this or that or heard this or saw this YouTube video this guy get healed this guy this that is that real it's like well you know maybe I mean how would I know I'm not omniscient you know yes I because I have a very strong interest in like paranormal stuff I know stuff can be faked I know the power of suggestion is absolutely real I know people can convince themselves of things that are not true but on the other hand I've had plenty of contact with people who are you know in that sort of orbit or who themselves I have experienced this and they're entirely trustworthy they have no reason to lie to me and it's like look I'm not going to consider this person a liar I'm gonna assume that God did that and that's okay with me you know I don't need to sort of try to correct God at some point I'm not going to be disappointed when I get to have it and yeah that guy really did heal that guy over there Mike you know you were wrong I mean that this is God's job God has his own job description I'm not going to tread on it I'm not going to get in its way you know God expects us to evaluate things especially in the world in which we live there's just a lot of stuff that really isn't you know of the spirit you know scripture itself knows that you know there are passages where Paul accuses people of claiming the title apostle and they are false teachers you know that and he actually uses both terms in the same we know that we know that's going to happen you know God doesn't expect that we're omniscient he knows what he's dealing with again so we need to evaluate but we also need to let you know be open to God doing stuff you know like as though his hands are tied you know and so I come from the other side where we felt very comfortable tying God's hands yeah and you know and it just shouldn't be you know it's fascinating in what you say there so I got saved in a little Pentecostal church in 1971 as a hero in shooting LSD using hippie rock drummer 16 years old radically born again my life transformed wonderful and encounter with God rich spiritual life loving him serving him sharing the gospel and over the years in the church I started to get a little skeptical I saw a couple of things that rub me the wrong way I was now starting starting grad school I was interacting with a wider part of the body I began to see that most of the scholars were Calvinists they weren't charismatic I began to wonder about the traditions that I was saved in started to enlarge my horizons in one way that was positive but in another way fed into an intellectual and theological pride because after all you know like you I got my PhD in Semitic studies and I studied at all secular universities under people who didn't believe what I believed and you know being a tongue-speaking Pentecostal is not really sophisticated when you're in grad school but you know holding to the historic Orthodox doctrines of Calvinism and you know that appealed to me more and I'm not critiquing Calvinists I'm just talking about me my experience so I actually tried to distance myself from my Pentecostal roots I remember reading Robert Gromacky's book on the modern tongues movement against it and BB Warfield's counterfeit miracles and acquiring other books that attacked charismatic beliefs and I joined another church that was barely charismatic if at all but I couldn't get away from the words that I tried to talk myself out of it and I couldn't scripturally that was one and two when I would really pray and commune with the Lord it only confirmed to me the reality of the gifts of the Spirit and then in 1982 as I was working on my doctoral dissertation which my initial one was on abbreviated verbal idioms in the Hebrew Bible so you know Nassau does it mean to lift the voice does it mean to lift the hand? That's the best seller right there Oh yeah trust me man to this day people groan when I tell them I didn't finish you know Shalach to send does that mean to send messenger you know just man that would have been a classic so I put that down and God brought me through a season of personal repentance because of leaving my first love I was a serious committed believer we had the poor and refugees living in our home but I'd really left that place of earlier intimacy and faith and what happened during this time is the Holy Spirit was mightily poured out on me touched many in our church and people started getting healed but they were in my view misquoting scripture I'm saying no that doesn't refer to physical healing that refers to spiritual healing and yet they were being healed so I ended up switching my doctoral dissertation to the root Rafa that's how it happened that that I focused all my time on trying to understand what did this Hebrew word mean restore heal what was the root of it how did it work out in other Semitic languages so that was my dissertation on the Lord your healer a philological study of the root Rafa in the Hebrew Bible in the ancient east and then 10 years later I did a fresh wave of research took about 10 or 20 percent from my dissertation and then wrote a whole volume for Zondervan which is still in print called Israel's Divine Healer which looked at the broader issues and even went into the New Testament as well so I've been very dogmatic I'm believing these things to be scriptural even though healing is not my primary ministry even though I've prayed for all too many people with cancer and seeing them die but I thoroughly believe that God still heals today that we can come to him with faith and expectation but it's again based on first I was convicted by what I read but what joyed my world was seeing God move in undeniable ways and because I've ministered around the world and have friends around the world I mean outstanding miracles even even resurrections from the dead and people blind for many years one of my friends ministering in Africa in one single meeting and this is a colleague this is you know known documented three kids and one family that had all gone blind through disease were instantly healed in one meeting and when these things are shared publicly and the people because the people in the villages they wait we know them we know their family we've been with them for we were we carried that cripple in with us and then Muslims getting up and getting saved and then you go back there 10 years later and you see the churches are thriving and Jesus is being glorified why are we so skeptical the God who raised the dead who raised Jesus from the dead and the God has given authority to Jesus so in his name we go and preach and heal why should we question it this is God moving around the world to me we should be rejoicing and if we see error then we step in to help and you know last thing in John 5 Jesus heals the lame man 38 years lame right and he tells them take up your mat and walk what's the Sabbath so obviously Jesus did this intentionally just like in John 9 the way he heals the blind man violates what apparently were Jewish traditions of the day a couple of them so when the religious leaders see the man they've known them cripple for years what's the first question they asked you who told you to pick up the mat that to me is the mentality of destructive criticism and of dead religious tradition instead of saying whoa what happened you're healed what happened to you oh by the way you shouldn't carry that mat you should put it down but you're healed what happened instead they didn't ask about the healing they wanted to know who told you to carry your mat and I think sometimes we can have that tendency that because something violates my style the same thing when when the disciples come to Jesus and say you know there's a man driving out demons in your name but he's not one of us do we shut him down and Jesus said no you can't work a miracle in my name and then the next minute be against me so I think sometimes we and charismatic do it the same way we can be so narrow that if it's not exactly the way we're used to doing it then we reject it I think we should rejoice and say hey if this is the Lord wonderful let's be Berean if this is the Lord wonderful but we'll study and be sure oh and I said last thing but another last thing I do believe because we use terms apostles prophets I should have said this right at the outset there are potential abuses with that in terms of either authority or lording it over people when they're used and it's just part of the parlance it's no different than pastor teacher evangelist it's just a descriptive term and we don't see them as lording it over people that's great it just gives different aspects to the different ways God uses people today but if someone thinks apostle that means I have New Testament Apostolic authority big big dangerous red flag if someone thinks there's on profit I can now tell you the will of God big dangerous red flag so yes in those circles where those titles exist there's more possibility of abuse in those ways but it's something again that's an abuse that we address and deal with it's certainly not part of the mainstream well I know you have to run I'm glad you you summarized that before you go you have a new book yes and I want to give you a chance to mention it so tell us the title and what it's about real quick yes Enoch takes on the Nifilene no no just kidding just kidding you stole that you're still trying to write one that'll sell like some of yours okay it's it just came out last week it's called saving a sick America a prescription for moral and cultural transformation it's a book literally about the fall and rise of America how low we fall and morally and spiritually but how through the scripture we can as believers turn back to God and even influence the nation and even to lay out the very real possibility that there could yet be another great awakening ahead and that our best days could even be ahead so it's called saving a sick America and if folks want to stay in touch with me we're on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter my daily radio show normally eight to ten new articles and videos a week askdrbrown.org ASKDRbrown.org all right well thanks for coming on you know with us good discussion I think it's going to be helpful and I'm thinking the audience is going to get a lot out of it so thanks well thanks and thanks for all you do man I appreciate it so glad that you're doing what you do it does help a whole lot of people all right Mike well I feel like I can sleep now I can calm down because I there's there's no big Illuminati NAR conspiracy there's no there doesn't seem to be some organized plot within the church I feel like I can calm down a little bit yeah well that's good I mean you know I think it's like anything else you know where you it's a mixed bag you know the charismatic charismatic stuff the NAR stuff you know the NAR thing you know sort of reminds me of you know how Roman emperors you know might have functioned you know Roman emperors were supposed to be gods you know and some of those guys are like yeah whatever you know I mean I know I'm not a god but if you want to talk that way whatever but then other ones took it really really seriously and so it just seems to me that you know some of the the leadership you know of something that could be called NAR or might you know be affiliated with NAR either openly or they're doing the same kinds of things with people who would declare themselves to be NAR you know that that whole thing it seems that the more seriously they take it as though that's the thing to promote either their their own status within it or or some idea within it that then we've got a problem you know if we if we take it more seriously than the gospel more seriously than you know a commitment to to scripture you know elevating experience above scripture and this you know sort of idiosyncratic idea you know not really caring to investigate it scripturally then we're going to have problems so there's lots of problems here lots of problems you know within the church and other areas so there we go you know it's I think it's an issue of organization it's an issue of caring too much about something that is peripheral and and you know bad ideas get magnified when people grab them they see some advantage to them and then they run with them either for self a grandisement or maybe they're needy and they need attention or power or something like that so yeah you know I I'm glad we had the discussion you know on on both sides of it I think Mike was pretty clear that absolutely there are things to be concerned about here but you know it's not a like you said a big you know sort of conspiracy in other words there's not like sort of unified commitment of thought you know like sort of driving an agenda but people people can get swept up in it you know they can they can latch onto some terrible theology and it can be quite destructive so I'm going to go back to what I said earlier as we wrap up here and just say look you were not saved to perpetuate a subculture you were not saved to perpetuate a movement you are not saved you know to perpetuate some denomination your focus should be on your individual walk with the Lord trying to do something for the kingdom of God which is not of this world it's not tied to political structures or cultural structures or anything like that but what can you do to to do something positive there as often as possible through the course of your life you know have that as your focus the people around you and don't live for for this kind of you know stuff this movement level stuff it's just it's completely unnecessary so I'm I'm glad we had the discussion yeah and I think Dr. Brown articulated it very well that the charismatic the non-charismatics we can learn from each other rather than us Christians fighting amongst ourselves let's learn what the other one brings to the table yeah so I thought he articulated that very well yeah and I'm fine with doing that as long as it's sort of disconnected from from a power agenda sure there's abuses for everything yeah I've seen you know the same kinds of things on the other side within you know within fundamentalism and again I've shared this before my my sort of imperfect way of kind of parsing this is you know you can tell me you believe this or that and you experienced this or that or you saw this or that you know ultimately I don't know if it was of God I don't know if it was true or not I'm going to evaluate it by scripture I'm going to assume especially if I know you I'm going to assume that you have no reason to lie to me and I am content to just let it there you know I don't feel burdened that I've got to go out and imitate it I've got to go out and validate it I've got to go out and study it and destroy it if your heart's in the right place if it doesn't alter the gospel if you're not adding to the gospel and marrying it to some other doctrine or your own experience whatever I'm just going to let it go I'm content to let it go and be warmed and filled but I just want people to think scripturally you know think well about whatever that thing is and you know we'll find out the cream usually rises to the top it'll bear fruit one way or the other but it's not our job to be fixated on defending this or that it's you know what are we doing for the Lord you know honestly you know what are we getting done so anyway just I'm glad we had both sides of the discussion and we're able to do this you know we didn't expect to do two in a row right back to back but glad we were able to do that all right Mike I know I said at last episode that next week is back in the Hebrews but we mean it this time next week we mean it this time that's right yeah absolutely well we want to thank Dr. Michael Brown for coming on and I just want to thank everybody else for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast God bless thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast to support this podcast visit www.nakedbibleblog.com to learn more about Dr. Heiser's other websites and blogs go to www.brmsh.com