The Pope Cannot Bless What God Will Not Bless

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The pope has sanctioned some kind of blessing for same-sex unions? 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. This is not some made-up news. It's big. It's out there in the public.

And even though my focus is not Catholicism and the Catholic Church, this is something we need to comment on. Welcome to the broadcast. Michael Brown here. 866-34-TRUTH. Here to infuse you with faith, with truth, with courage. Here to help the Church get healthy so we can thrive in God and make the impact He has called us to.

You get to weigh in. If you're Catholic, I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear your feelings.

And if you're part of a Catholic Church, what do you think your parish priest might have to say? 866-348-7884. But as we're nearing the end of the year, I'm opening the following lines to any subject you want to talk to me about like we do on Fridays. Anything you want to talk to me about, especially those who may have a different take on something or who feel I'm wrong on a particular issue or I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do, by all means, give us a call.

866-348-7884. Okay. There are various points of ministry that God's called me to focus on. There are debates I've had over the years.

There are books that I've written, articles that I've written, many videos we've put out. There has not been a focus within that on Catholicism or the Catholic Church. Now, I came to faith in an Italian Pentecostal church a little over 52 years ago. And the great majority of folks in that church were former Catholics. Some had been very devout Catholics, some had been more nominal Catholics, but they got born again.

They left the Catholic Church. And it was pretty well thought in a church where I got saved that if you were truly saved, you could not stay in the Catholic Church. So, I did not come to faith in an environment that worked together with the Catholic Church or that looked at Catholics as saved at all.

That's the environment in which I got saved. Over the years, obviously, I have theological differences, many theological differences with the Catholic Church. And, of course, I don't recognize the authority of the pope, but I've met Catholic believers over the years. I've appreciated the role that Catholic leaders have played in the pro-life movement, many of them before evangelicals were involved. And when you attack Christians, Catholics are going to get attacked, right?

It's just going to be, you know, movies, it's going to be the corrupt Catholic priest or this or that. So, I understand the association with many people in the world of Catholicism with Christianity in general. But in any case, even though I've had a couple of debates with Catholics over the years, it's not been a major focus. Contrary to say, my friend Dr. James White, who's had many Catholic debates and is very acute in his criticism of Catholic theology, while I have these profound differences with Catholic theology, it has not been my focus. Now, in more recent years, as I've been writing op-eds the last 10 or 15 years and then doing daily talk radio for 15 plus years, what's happened is that I have Catholic colleagues like John Zemirak, writing on the stream where I write every week, multiple articles a week. And John is a tremendous critic of Pope Francis, a very, very strong critic. In fact, in his own words, he refers to Pope Francis' poisonous reign of error. That's in John's latest article. Alright, so, those are his views.

He's very strong. And because the stream has both evangelical and Catholic writers, that's launched by James Robinson, and I write for the stream all the time, the policy is, let evangelicals criticize evangelicals and let Catholics criticize Catholics, so I've left a lot of that criticism, a lot of the polemics to my Catholic colleagues. Something like this is something that I have to address.

I have to speak up about, I have to talk about, and the implications will be worked out within the Catholic Church, but they are massive. So, here's the way John starts his article on this, John Zemirak. And you never have to wonder what John is thinking.

Like it or not, you never have to wonder about what John is thinking. He says this, Today, I got one of those emails nobody wants to receive. You know, the ones where a journalist informs you that the leader of your church has authoritatively endorsed grave, unrepented sin, mocked not just timeless and current church teaching, but the natural law itself, and opened up faithful clergy to persecution by the state. And, by the way, would you like to comment? So, that's how John starts off his article.

So, what exactly happened? Here's how it's laid out by the Washington Times. Pope Francis on Monday, so yesterday, approved letting priests bless same-sex couples, sparking criticism from conservative Catholics and praise from the LGBTQ community. Such blessings would not rise to the level of church-sanctioned same-sex marriages, the Vatican cautioned, but would offer gay Catholics the opportunity to seek God's mercy without being subject, quote, to an exhaustive moral analysis. In other words, do what you're doing without being judged.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the declaration fiducia supplicans, with the Pope's approval, but not his signature, less than three months after a paper letter said such blessings were possible, so long as they, quote, do not transmit a wrong conception of marriage. Let me be straightforward, friends. This is not just a step in the wrong direction. This is theological double-talk. This is spiritual drivel. This is a mockery of the Word of God.

Here's the short version. The Pope cannot bless. The priests cannot bless. No clergyman, no individual, no minister of the Gospel, no being can bless what God does not bless. You may say words, you may have a ceremony, you may go through some waving of a wand or sprinkling of whatever, but you cannot produce blessing when God himself does not bless. When something is contrary to his will and contrary to his word and contrary to his order and contrary to his desire and contrary to what is best for human thriving, you cannot bless that. You can say words, you can make pronouncements, but you cannot bless it.

It is not blessed in its very nature. So to say it again, this statement from the Catholic Church is theological double-talk, spiritual drivel, and a mockery of the Word of God. Now, let's break it down a little bit, okay? Let's take a gay couple. Some of you are listening and you're, here I am, just another religious fundamentalist, hateful bigot, homophobe, etc.

Hear me out for a second, alright? You're a gay couple. Your commitment to each other, you would say, is like my commitment to my wife Nancy. And maybe you've been faithful Catholics, but you've had to keep your relationship quiet.

Like faithful Catholics in terms of church attendance, in terms of communion, in terms of the various calendar rites and prayers and things like that. So you're faithful Catholics, you're in a committed relationship, you don't have an open relationship, you're not sleeping around with 30 different people every year, right? You're not marching down the gay pride parades, naked and whipping each other, okay?

You're not doing any of that perverse stuff. You're in a loving, committed relationship, why can't the church recognize it? Obviously, from your perspective, this is divine mercy. Obviously, from your perspective, this is yet another example of the church outgrowing its outdated traditions. In your mind, this is an extension of the love of God, and people like me are just the hateful bigots who are not with the times. I get that. I get that perspective. I get the argument that this is about compassion, that this is about mercy, that this is about kindness.

But hear me, please. The word of God says, open rebuke is better than secret love, that the kisses of an enemy are profuse, but faithful are the wounds of a friend. It is love that compels me to say, God never planned for it, God never intended it, God never desired it to this moment, and God will never bless it when a man is with a man or a woman is with a woman. And anyone that tells you otherwise is deceiving you and hurting you. And even if they do it in the name of love, love does no harm to its neighbor, Romans 13. You say, yeah, well, when the church does this, then we flourish, then we're happy, then we're satisfied, then that burden of guilt is off of us, so that is love.

It feels like love, but it's not ultimate love, because ultimately it's harming you, it's hurting you, it's giving you a false assurance. And if you have a relationship with God, and you really fear God, deep down on the inside you probably still struggle, unless you've hardened your heart to the point that you no longer do. Let's think of this for a second. You say, well, no, no, no, no, we are not saying this is mattering.

Well, then what is it? How can you bless? Here, let's talk about a man being with a man. If the word explicitly says, Leviticus 18, 22, that that act is detestable, the sexual relationship of a man with a man is detestable in God's sight, just like an incestuous relationship is detestable in His sight. If Paul explicitly says that men having sex with men will exclude you from the kingdom of God, just like practicing adultery will, practicing drunkenness will, practicing extortion will, and other sins that Paul lists, those things will exclude us, unless we come and receive mercy and grace and forgiveness through Jesus, a new life in Him, practicing those things in an unrepentant way will preclude us from entering to the kingdom of God. The word of God is explicit on it.

There's no ambiguity if we just let the text speak for themselves without filtering them through the lens of the sexual revolution and gay activism, etc. So, under no circumstances then, if here's a man having sex with a man and the word of God says in God's sight that's detestable, then how can the church say anything positive? How can the church say anything affirming?

How can the church in any way add blessing? It can't. It cannot possibly do that. You know, that would be like saying you jump out of an airplane and as you descend to the earth you're actually going up. No, you're not.

You're going down. And this idea, this idea that, well, it can't seem to be marriage or have the appearance of marriage, well, what else is it? You are giving blessing to a couple living together. They may be the nicest couple that you know.

They may be very committed to each other, very much in love with each other. It's heartbreaking for me to think of that and to say, hey, that is not the will of God. That is not what God intended.

That is not what God desires. I don't do it in some gloating way as a heterosexual. I just gloat at the struggles of others. I can't relate.

I can't imagine the struggles of others. I'm simply saying it's not what God ordained. It's not what he will bless. And by all means we must call people to repent and call out to Jesus as Lord and say, Lord, I submit my life to you. Whatever that means, I'm going to follow you. I'm going to take up the cross and deny myself and follow you. And I believe your grace will be enough. And plenty of ex-gays around the world will say, yes, his grace is more than enough.

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Make sure you use the code BROWN25. Okay, I've got more to say about this in terms of the Pope's letter, the Pope's recommendation, the official statement from the Catholic Church. Not as a Catholic expert, not as a Catholic basher, just some obvious thoughts from someone that's on the outside. And talk even more broadly about progressive religion, where that's going. People think, oh, that's the path forward. It's actually the path not just to spiritual apostasy, but to spiritual bankruptcy and to numerical decline and influential decline as well.

Whereas those that hold to the real gospel are thriving around the world. So we'll get to a bunch more issues that relate to this, but I'm going to go straight to the phones. And let's start in El Paso, Texas. Julius, welcome to the Line of Fire. Hello? Hey. Hey, Dr. Brown.

It's been a little while since I've talked to you. I basically want to know your thoughts on the whole Pope and him blessing civil unions. You know, that's the main reason that I called and I'm pretty disturbed by this and I'm going to just tell the ugly truth. This Pope is deceived. Let's just be real, because everything that he's doing goes against the word of God.

Everything. Yeah. And you know, St. Paul talked about this. And I'm just going to be brutal about all this. There are wonderful Roman Catholics out there, but the Vatican itself, it's going to be destroyed. I'm just being real.

Yeah. Hey, Julius, so I mean, in the first part of the broadcast, I laid out clearly my thoughts on this. And look, when you have, let's just be realistic. When you have a denomination as big as, say, Southern Baptists with 15 million plus people, it's a shame, but it's not a surprise that you've got scandals, sex scandals, things like that. And these have cropped up a lot in recent years.

It's a terrible shame, but it's not a surprise. When you have something as big as the Catholic Church with over a billion people, with the monetary power that it has, with the political power that it has, with the world influence that it has, it's not a surprise at all there that you've got all kinds, it's not an excuse, not downplaying, but not a surprise in the least that you have all kinds of scandals and issues. And as a non-Catholic, I might look at things and just think, oh, if the Pope says so, then that's official. Then that is now doctrine of the Catholic Church and the Pope is seen to be infallible.

No, no, that's not the way it works. It's not that every statement that's issued by the Pope or every decision made by the Vatican is considered to be authoritative. And that's why, Julius, you will see an uprising of faithful Catholics, traditional Catholics, Catholics that adhere to Biblical standards or Church standards who will be absolutely ignoring what the Pope has said and done. Now, where that's going to go, that's a big question. Could it be that there would be some type of split in the Catholic Church?

I mean, there have been massive splits before, right, in different ways, massive cataclysmic shifts and splits. Will that happen? Will it be that if the Church continues to go further and further to the left, will there just be a complete breakaway with a new system set up and hundreds of millions of Catholics becoming part of that? Will there be a pushback so that the next Pope comes in as a staunch conservative and undoes a lot of these things? I'm all for the expression of love and tenderness and compassion and kindness that comes from Francis and him wanting to be down with the people and, you know, touch the leper, so to say.

I love that. I think it's beautiful being more touchable, being more approachable, whereas the previous Pope held much more to the high pomp and circumstance of the Pope and everything that attaches to the papacy. Of course, he was a strong conservative theologian in that regard in terms of his moral values, etc. So, that's the question. Or will it just be that the Church continues as it is the Catholic Church but with massive internal splintering?

We shall see, and I'm not an expert on Catholicism, so unless I get insight from the Lord, it's just to speculate here. But thank you, sir, for the call. Let's go to Giuseppe in Virginia. Welcome to the line of fire.

Hey, Dr. Brown, it's Dyers with Tennessee. I wonder what? I'm just looking at my screen.

We've got this brand new screen up close to me, but it's still such that I have to squint to see things. No worries. I'll figure it out. No worries.

But you're in Tennessee. I was actually just reading chapter 4 of your awesome book, Why So Many Christians Have Left the Faith. And that says, if gay is good, the Church is bad. I'm just wondering, there's an implication between what seems to be this mass falling away of the Church and the hyper-grace movement, all that stuff, and the homosexual movement. Is there any implications together? Do they tie into each other? Is one influencing the other? What are your thoughts on that?

All right, so first the contents of that chapter. I explained that in the general public perception, especially with young people. Well, if gay is good, then the Church must be bad because the Church is anti-gay.

That means the Church hates my friend or hates my brother or hates my sister or hates me. That's perception. And that perception has led to many falling away.

There's no question about that. And in that case, while holding to the truth of the word, we need to do our best to reach out with love, compassion, mercy, kindness, and show that, point people to Jesus, who is the Redeemer and who is the ultimate expression of God's love and who does call us to radical change. But as to the larger question, I was writing Hyper-Grace and Can You Be Gay and Christian at about the same time, 2014-2015, I was working on both back and forth at the same time, and I found extraordinary parallels that I actually quote. Here's a guy that is just preaching grace and we've come out from under the law and come out from under the condemnation of Sinai and we now live by grace and et cetera. And a lot of it sounded good, but when you keep reading, you realize this is, quote, a gay Christian.

This is a guy who says we've come out from legalism, and it sounded word for word like Hyper-Grace, this grace teaching that goes beyond what scripture says and ignores other parts of the Bible and is terribly dangerous. So it's absolutely part and parcel, part of the same apostasy, part of the same falling away. Now there are Hyper-Grace teachers that do teach strong biblical morality but have just gone too far in the grace emphasis and hopefully they'll swing back. But they haven't fully denied certain scriptural standards.

Others have. Others have even gone off the deep end and denied the authority of scripture, et cetera, because of this progressive state of apostasy. The good news is, though, that overall, around the world, where the church is growing, where the church is thriving, where young people are flocking, where buildings can't contain everyone, where the prayer meetings are overflowing, where every month new converts are being baptized, dozens, scores of them. Overwhelmingly, those are in churches where the gospel is being preached plainly, where biblical standards are being held up, and people are being transformed. It's something I read years back in an article by Al Mohler, and he was quoting the German theologian Wolfhard Pannenberg, who had observed that when people are looking for the world of religion, they're not looking for something same, they're looking for something different. And when basically you're going to church and you end up hearing what the world says being affirmed in church, like we're even there. And that's why it's been documented for decades, and people have been shocked, but I've written many articles about it updating the documentation, that the churches that are growing, thriving, not dead legalistic ones, but those that hold to biblical standards and preach a strong gospel and call for repentance and believe in the authority of Scripture and welcome the working of the Spirit, those are the ones growing and thriving, and the so-called progressive ones, the ones that are so enlightened, the ones that are appealing to the world, they're bleeding members, and it's inevitable, because lives are not being changed, and God is not blessing them.

Thank you for the call. Michael Brown here, friends, with a very, very sober announcement. We're living in different days. We're living in different times. The battle has come to us, and like it or not, every single one of us, we are in the line of fire today. And friends, there is an all-out war today against the Jewish people. There is an all-out war like there was before the Holocaust to annihilate and destroy Jewish people, and God has positioned us with the line of fire on the front lines to do two things that are very, very critical. One, to speak the truth about Israel, to speak the truth about anti-Semitism, to push back against the destructive lies, to push back against false theologies, to stand strong and tall and say, this is what the Word says, and this is what reality is. And then, with that, friends, we also reach out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

It is a key role that we play. We are equipping Jewish evangelists around the world. We are equipping the church to share the good news. We are directly involved in winning Jewish people to Jesus, Yeshua, so we are fighting on these two critically important fronts in unique ways, and I want to call on each of you to stand with me, stand with our support team, become a torchbearer today. These are urgent days, and you can make a difference.

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Here again, it's Dr. Michael Brown. I just want to give you a heads up. I'm planning on the Thursday broadcast on Thoroughly Jewish Thursday to talk about a part of American history that I bet many of us don't know anything about. It's going to be very jarring. It's going to be very intense. I'm going to talk about, even play some clips from when Nazis filled Madison Square Garden 20,000 people in 1939. Oh, it's a shocker.

You see some of the footage and will hear some of it. It's shocking. And it's a reminder that you cannot take American support for the Jewish people or American support for Israel. You cannot take that for granted for a split second. It's why what we're doing today is of the utmost critical importance.

866-348-7884. Going back to the phones momentarily, but I want to take you back to an article that I wrote in August. And let me get the article up. Hang on. I've got the wrong article here.

Is this it? No, that was what we talked about yesterday, the coming collapse of the secular universities. All right, here, let me grab the article again. There we go. It was August 16th this year and was entitled, Progressive Religion May Be Dying, But The Gospel Is Thriving.

So I just want to continue what I was talking about for a moment with the last caller. The headline was stark and unnerving. Religion is dying, same-sex blessings allowed, but is it too little, too late for the church's shaky future? But was it a true and accurate statement? Is, quote, religion, meaning the Christian religion, dying worldwide? Is the church's only hope the embracing of same-sex, quote, marriage and other, quote, progressive theological positions? Actually, true religion, meaning a vibrant Jesus-centered, biblically-based, compassion-filled, spirit-empowered, no-compromise expression of the Christian faith, is thriving worldwide. A stark contrast, man-made religion, meaning a me-centered, rationally-based perversion of the faith that substitutes affirmation for transformation, is dying worldwide.

In short, the headline has turned things upside down. As for the quote in the headline, it was excerpted from this unattributed post on Twitter, now X, too little, too late, now that religion is dying, they want to bless us. To be sure, the Church of England seems to be dying. This is about the Church of England's decision to, quote, bless same-sex couples. Already, in 2013, an article on the Conversation website began with these ominous words, like an Old Testament prophet telling the Israelites that they were doomed, Lord Carey has been mourning Anglicans for years of their possible annihilation. The Church is, quote, one generation away from extinction, he declares.

The reality is less dramatic, but the story is not altogether wrong. Young adults in Britain are far less likely than their parents and grandparents to have a religious identity. This is from the 2013 article. The Church of England, in particular, has been squeezed hard by the trend away from religion. This is well illustrated by the graphic below, which shows religious affiliation by year of birth, and the oldest group polled, one in two, identified as members of the Church of England, among the youngest, that figure falls to one in 20.

So, the oldest that were on this poll, 2013, one in two is a member of the Church of England, the youngest, one in 20! More recently, as reported by Church Times in 2022, the Church of England faces extinction within 40 years because the faith it proclaims is not contagious enough, a new study reports. The study was compiled by Dr. John Hayward, a mathematician at the University of South Wales and the founder of the Church Growth Modelling Site. He analyzed data from 13 denominations to calculate their R-rate, a technique more usually associated with calculating the spread of disease.

For a virus such as COVID-19, an R number of more than one indicates that the disease is spreading rapidly, while an R-rate of less than one points to its dying out. Dr. Hayward has now applied the same model to church attendance. Based on this model, the future of the Church of England is bleak.

Extinction! It's a very strong word, but that's what's being predicted. And I wrote August of this year, this is not because the Church of England became too progressive, too late.

It's the precise opposite. The decline is largely because the Church departed from its biblical and historic roots, becoming like the world in order to win the world, which is always a council of despair. In stark contrast, and from a global perspective, a 2015 report stated that, quote, one quarter of the two billion Christians in the world are Pentecostal or charismatic. Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion in the world. And note carefully, the report did not say that it was just the fastest growing branch of Christianity, but rather the fastest growing religion in the world.

That's been the case for decades. That's why a 2020 study spoke of, quote, the unprecedented numerical growth of the Spirit-empowered Church, growing at nearly four times the growth rate of both Christianity and the world's population from 1900 to 2020. Currently, Spirit-empowered believers compromise one quarter of the entire Christian community, which is expected to grow to one third by the year 2050. Asia and Oceania experienced the most rapid growth of Spirit-empowered Christianity. However, the Spirit-empowered population in Africa is expected to grow more quickly within the next 30 years. Afghanistan and Cambodia, where Christianity remains relatively new, are the countries currently experiencing the fastest upsurge in Spirit-empowered Christianity. And what do these church movements have in common? Aside from their emphasis on encountering God and the power of the Spirit, they all tend to hold to traditional biblical values when it comes to sexuality and marriage. Put another way, they're the opposite of progressive, and those are the ones that are growing and thriving.

So go ahead and do the math. In England, over 2,000 churches have closed in the last decade, with a high percentage of them being Church of England congregations. Progressive religion is dying. In contrast, around the world, the conservative, Bible-based, Spirit-empowered faith is growing so quickly that the big problem is how to disciple and ground all the new converts. So the, quote, religion that tries to bring the standards of God down to accommodate people is dying. The religion that, through the cross and by God's grace, seeks to bring people up to the standards of His word is thriving. So it doesn't mean every Anglican church is about to shut down. This is what I wrote in August. It doesn't mean every Pentecostal, Charismatic church is exploding in numbers.

But it does tell us which tree is alive and healthy and which tree is dying. Now, make that same application to the Catholic Church and let's see where that goes. Alright, we go over to Charlotte, North Carolina. Vicki, welcome to The Line of Fire. Thanks for calling. Hi, Dr. Brown, how are you? I'm doing well, thanks. How about you?

I'm doing well. Well, first of all, I'm very supportive for Israel, and so is my church, and so, you know, hey, we're supposed to pray for Israel, and we're doing that. Thank you.

Well, you're very welcome. But my call is about this family, they're Catholic, and I'm their honorary grandmother to their granddaughter, but they are not married. And they invited me to their church for a Christmas program, and I went, and it's very supportive for Israel, they did a dance for Israel. And when I invite them to my church, they come and the little girl goes with me all the time. But I tell them they need to get married, and they say, well, they are married, but they're not. But they called each other husband 1, so I don't know, they're Catholic, but it's not my place to tell the leaders of their church that I met when I went, what's going on.

So I don't know, what am I supposed to do with it? So why do they claim to be married? Because they live together. Because they live together. Got it, got it. And they got a little girl together.

Right, right. So first thing, I would look at it as an open door that you have to be a blessing to the family and to the little girl, right? To let your light shine, to be Godly influence, and maybe she'll want to attend services at your church even more and hear more of the gospel. But I would pray that the couple would come under conviction. If they love each other and they want to spend the rest of their lives together, I don't know what their hang up is in terms of officially getting married either by justice to the priest or by clergy, but I would pray that the Holy Spirit would bring them under conviction and only speak if you really felt the Lord calling you to speak. But, you would have to recognize that you're not dealing with them as fellow Christians.

You know what I'm saying? That in your interaction with them, you just interact with them as friends, as a couple that you love, as someone that, as you said, an honorary grandmother of the child, that you do that without implying that they're believers or right with God or something like that. So, you're saying, okay, I recognize that you're not right with God because you're living together out of wedlock regardless of your profession of faith, so I'm not going to regard you as fellow Christians. Now, someone would say, look, they claim to be Christians, they're living in sin, don't fellowship with them at all, but they may not be Christians. They may attend church. So, have you seen anything in them that gives you an indication that they really know the Lord? The little girl she prays when we all go out and she blesses the whole meal, and when I talk to them about Jesus, they believe in God. They believe in Jesus.

So, let me take back then, let me reverse what I said then. If they really claim to be followers of Jesus, then you do have to treat them differently. If they really claim to be followers of Jesus, it's one thing if they're just church attenders and they don't know the Lord, then you deal with them as such, and you pray that they come to know the Lord. Like, let's just say it was a secular couple, and you babysat their kid, and they're living together out of wedlock.

Well, the big concern is not that. The big concern is they don't know the Lord. But if they really claim to know Jesus, then I might just go to the church leader and say, hey, I'm not a very grandmother, I've come to some of the services here, I really enjoy the church, but I'm confused about something, could you help me understand?

And just ask a question, not behind their back, but just, I'm trying to understand this. And if the priest says, oh, I didn't know that, well, they should be married, now you have a little more ammunition, you know? And I would lovingly press it and say, look, you want me involved in your life, but the Bible tells me I'm not to fellowship with people who are claiming to follow Jesus and are living in sin, and that's creating a problem. What's stopping you from just getting the official blessing?

They're the ones that should, not the same-sex couple, but they should. So, may the Lord give you wisdom. I pray for the right moments, you know, in the right setting, you don't want to be insensitive, you have a historic relationship, but I might just ask the priest of their church, hey, I'm confused about this, they're a great couple, I'm the honorary grandmother of their daughter, but they're not actually married, and I don't know what to make of this. Maybe he'll give you some words of wisdom, and then from there, if they really claim to be followers of Jesus and you're closely involved in their lives, I would lovingly press it with them. All right, may the Lord bless you, give you wisdom, and smile on you as you do it. God bless, thanks for calling, and thanks for praying for Israel. Do you think two out of three Americans age 50 and older experience some level of cognitive impairment affecting their daily lives?

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To feel better and brighter, try NeuroShine for yourself. Order today and use promo code BROWN25 to receive 25% off your order. As a new customer, 100% of your order proceeds from your first order will go to support the Line of Fire radio broadcast. Call 1-800-771-5584, 1-800-771-5584, or online at t-r-i-v-i-t-a, triveda.com. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again, it's Dr. Michael Brown.

Line of Fire broadcast 866-348-7884. You get to weigh in. I want to tell you a little story here. It's one that saddens my heart, but it's very relevant. Many of you know that it was in 2004 when God began to really lay on my heart to push back against homosexual activism in society, and that I quickly saw that already, almost 20 years ago now, was the principal threat to freedom of religion, speech, and conscience in America. At the same time, I knew that pushing back against an agenda was only part of God's heart, and then I needed his love and compassion for the people, so I made appointments with local gay activists.

I read what I could from those that were professing gay Christians and others that were part of the early gay rights movement and tried to understand the story until I would literally weep over people. And the word that God dropped in my heart in early 2005 was reach out and resist. Reach out to the people with compassion. Resist the agenda with courage. Put another way, we need hearts of compassion and backbones of steel. And one of the things we've advocated over the years is that we have to humanize, not demonize, our opponents.

Ideological opponents, theological opponents, political opponents. We have to humanize, not demonize them. There are people who do wicked things that are given over to evil, and we recognize that, we rebuke that, we call that out. We do recognize that when the Nazis rose to power with the destructive acts that brought about the death of tens of millions, that the Nazis needed to be taken down. That that is a right and righteous thing to do. I'm not talking about a passivity when it comes to declaring war. Let's say Israel trying to take out Hamas, I believe they have a moral responsibility to do so. The question is how do you do that without creating even more radical movements in the process and hurting many innocent people?

That's the challenge. But I'm not diminishing that. But your average person is not a Hamas.

Your average person is not a Nazi. And even those that are shouting their abortion, for example, they may be doing it because they're hurting on the inside. Or as a gay couple, you say, well, a gay couple, they're doing evil, sinful things.

They may be in many respects more moral than a professing Christian couple, aside from acts that we would say are wrong in God's sight in their private lives. So, I tell you this story again with some level of pain. I was doing a radio interview some years back with David Kyle Foster. He's a well-known ex-gay leader with a powerful ministry. David was very lost when he was himself practicing homosexuality.

He got into heavy porn, he got into prostitution, promiscuity, drug use. He was very, very lost when the Lord saved him. So, he was sharing his testimony and subsequently I got a call. And this call was from a woman, a lesbian woman, and she said she and her partner had never done drugs, never got drunk, they loved their kids, they're leading productive lives, and they were not like David Kyle Foster. We began to talk and I found her, oh, it would be a miracle if she happened to be listening today. I seriously doubt it, but that would be a miracle if she was, if you are.

I'm so glad you're listening. So, we interacted and she was gracious and she recognized my tone in speech and attitude was not gay bashing, hitting people over the head with the Bible, despite the very strong statements I had made and stances I had taken. And I would notice on social media, I don't see 99% of what's posted because of the hundreds of thousands of people that we can reach through social media. But I would notice periodically that she would join in the comment, if somebody was gay bashing on our Facebook page, I would see her comment, Dr. Brown won't be happy to see this. And I would spot it and delete it, it's like, that's ugly, I don't want that on our page.

You don't attack anybody, I don't care who you are like that on our page. So, we exchanged information, emailed her, and I said, hey, look, could my wife and I have dinner with you and your partner? And she said, well, her partner's a little reluctant, you know, was raised in a Christian home and just a little reluctant, but was open to it. And I failed to follow through in a quick period of time.

I thought, okay, we'll get to it, you know, maybe a few months down the line. By the time I followed through and wrote to her, she said, I'm not meeting, I have no desire to meet you. She was just too put off by the stance I was taking. Even though she'd seen my heart, she just was too put off. What I was doing was wrong, was hurting gay people, gay couples, et cetera, and it was just plain wrong. And I feel bad for it to this day, and wonder what might have happened if we did get together, and if we did get to hear and see and understand one another's hearts better. And if she could always have that in mind in the midst of our differences, and perhaps a love for her and her partner, or prayers for them, perhaps it could have made a difference.

And perhaps hearing the gospel message with a new clarity, I don't know where the dinner would have gone, but I regret it to this day, and that's on me, because she did open the door, at least partly. At least partly. So I understand we're going to be rejected for the stance we take.

I get it. I could right now do a search on our various social media platforms and find the latest person attacking me for a stand that I've taken. And by the way, that comes with the turf. You expect it. I always kind of smile when I get attacked for a stand that I didn't take, or for attack for the exact opposite of what I actually believe. I kind of smile when I see that feel bad for the people attacking. I always feel bad for the people attacking, no matter who they are.

But it comes with the turf. I'm not shying away from controversy. In fact, I'm called to be a lightning rod for controversy. By God's calling, I run to it, not away from it. That's why many of you stand with us and support us, because you know the importance of the work that we're doing, and you appreciate the way that we're doing it. Still, it hurts me when I think there was a door open.

Perhaps it was open enough to really have a quality face-to-face meeting, and perhaps more of the love and truth of God could have come through me to touch this couple. But all that to say, we can stereotype. And here's a woman saying, look, we never did drugs.

We never got high. We don't sleep around. We're devoted to our kids. We love our kids. And I bet they're very devoted moms. Do I believe that the world's best mom cannot take the place of a dad? Yes, I believe that.

The world's best mom is still not a dad. I believe that. Do I believe that this couple did not have a relationship that God could bless? Maybe the woman I was interacting with was more of an atheist, if I remember. And it was her partner that came from the more Christian background. I don't know where she stood on that. But do I believe that God can or will bless a same-sex relationship?

No, never. That's why I've really challenged Pastor Andy Stanley. How dare you bring men who are, quote, married to men to speak to your church people as examples?

I don't care what you say from the pulpit, you are misleading and deceiving. And he knows my view. We've interacted. Before I talked about it on the radio, we emailed each other. I said, here's what I'm going to be saying.

If you have any issue with it, let me know. If you think I'm misrepresenting you, let me know. So this is not some secret thing I'm revealing. So that's despicable and destructive and harmful.

Terribly harmful. At the same time, let's not make everybody into some flaming gay promiscuous activist. Let's not stereotype. There's plenty out there, but let's not stereotype.

Let's do our best to humanize rather than demonize. All right, I've got time for another call. Let's go over to Cynthia.

Welcome to the line of fire. Hi. Yes. Thank you for taking my call.

I was calling because I'm not sure how to handle the conversation with my 20 year old daughter that's not Christian, hasn't been baptized. And well, she's staying at night in her boyfriend's house throughout the week. And I'm not sure how to really address the concerns of doing that.

Yes. So is it your concern that she's living together with someone out of wedlock or is your concern that it's easier for her to get pregnant out of wedlock? What's the biggest concern you have?

Yeah, I think both of those. But really, yeah, I have gone that path and I don't want her having to struggle going through that path that I had been in. And so she doesn't know that I did that. But I'm just kind of concerned that she will go that same path and be in a relationship she shouldn't be in. Yeah, so the biggest thing is she has to know the Lord, right? That's the biggest, biggest, biggest thing. You know, she can't fly before you walk.

And right now, the biggest prayer as a mother is for her salvation, for her to really come to know the Lord and be forgiven and be transformed. Because otherwise, living together or not is kind of secondary, you know what I'm saying? That it's important, but it's secondary to the bigger question of what about her relationship with God?

So I would not put anything as an obstacle there. In other words, if you made the focus in your interaction with her living together with someone, then that could get in the way of really just sharing the gospel with her and praying that the Holy Spirit would convict her that she needs the Lord. And it's just so common for people to do this, you know, it's no big deal.

You do it, you get married, you don't get married, whatever. It's just so common that it could probably hardly dawn on her that it's a big deal. So I would really pray for the boyfriend to come to know the Lord. Sometimes that's what happens, God gets hold of the other one. And then, if it's appropriate, at some point in time, just as a mother, to have a heart to heart and say, hey, you don't know this part of my background, but I think it's time you did.

If you felt that liberty, just say I'm not judging you, I'm not saying you're a bad person because of this. I just want you to know my own story. For whatever it's worth, some of the struggles I went through, that might help her. That might help, first, help her to understand your perspective, but give her something to really think about. And maybe that will help in her recognition of her need for the Lord. But the biggest thing, really, and we're just about out of time, I'm so glad I got to talk to you, is to, Lord, touch this young woman, open her heart to your love. We pray for her salvation.

We pray for the boyfriend, for his salvation, that they would encounter you, that something would happen supernaturally, and that one or both would come to know you. Give this mom wisdom, Lord. Give her wisdom. May she shine with your love and with your truth. In Jesus' name. All right, friends, back with you tomorrow. Never a dull moment here. Bless you, Cynthia. Thank you for your call.