Our Guest Dr. Michael Brown
Sid: We want everyone everywhere to understand God’s marvelous gift of grace. But you know what, there is a hyper-grace movement that is totally distorting God’s wonderful gift of grace. So I said “Who do I know that would be the best person to analyze what is true Biblical grace, and what is wrong with the hyper-grace movement?” Of course it was called the no brainer it’s my friend Dr. Michael Brown. Dr. Brown for those of you that aren’t familiar with him; he has a PhD in Near Eastern Languages from New York University. He speaks, reads, or writes a dozen languages. He has been in the scriptures for decades in the original languages. Mike I’m sure you had a burden before we even contacted you about this hyper-grace message that’s going around. When did you first… were concerned about this?
Michael: Well it’s because I love the message of grace so much and I’m so jealousy for God’s true grace. I started to get burdened when I saw just some distortions, some mixture that was coming with the grace message. But in particular the last year everywhere I turn I’m running into this. Everywhere I turn I’ll quote a scripture about holiness and purity and someone will come back to me “That’s legalism, why are you throwing this under me, I’m under grace.” And I thought that’s a strange response. I would talk about let’s press in, let’s go after the Lord and let’s seek Him. And they’d throw something back at me “That’s works. I’m under grace.” And then they’d start using all the same terms. “I’m not into behavior modification, I’m not into sin management.” And I thought “Where are these coming from?” And so the more I began to look at it the more I saw that there were a number of books, a number of teachers and a number of ministries that all felt that they were part of a “grace revolution” or a “grace reformation.” Some of them say that there have been things hidden from the church 100’s and 100’s of years and now we have recovered it and we are putting this out. And I became increasingly alarmed when I saw the extreme claims that were being made. I became increasingly alarmed when I saw people being damaged. Then Sid it was like a flood pastors, leaders, believers literally from all over the America and different countries saying “Mike you’ve got to speak about this, you’ve got to write about this, this is splitting our churches. This is confusing our people, families are being torn apart.” And I saw some being touched by a great revelation of grace. And I’m so jealous for it because we can never for a split second down play, despise, denigrate God’s grace. We live by grace 24-7 but I saw it being mixed with dangerous error.
Sid: Let me tell you what concerns me the most at this point. The Bible says “Without holiness we will not even see God.” And what the affect it’s having, even the ones that are not really in heresy, which most of them have a little bit of this heresy, is that when people start watching the TV shows, reading the books what happens is that barometer for holiness goes down and they start compromising. I don’t want to share testimonies of men and women of God that have done things like leaving their wife and marrying their secretary. But here’s the thing, that’s happened even before the hyper-grace message.
Michael: Hm hm.
Sid: But it’s justifying it, that’s what’s bothering me.
Michael: Right, and here’s the thing every hyper-grace teacher that I’ve read and listened to many I’ve dialoged with; I’ve reached out to them and said “I’m writing about this, I’m quoting you do I understand you correctly are you willing to reconsider your position?” And we’ve gone back and forth and I say “No, this is where I stand.” Here’s the deal though everyone that I speak to they say the same thing “No, no, no grace is not a license for sin” when you understand grace rightly it helps you to overcome sin.” I said “But the problem is when you teach that God has already forgiven all our future sins before we’ve ever commit them; when you teach we never have to confess our sins to God; when you teach that the Holy Spirit never convicts us of sin anymore; when you tell us that anything where you have to exert some sort of effort to please God or obey God that that’s all wrong that that the flesh that that’s not grace.” Of course you’re setting people up for destruction; of course you’re opening the door for deception to come in. And I’ve told them “We’re not telling people that grace gives them a license to sin your very message is telling it in other ways.” And that’s the mixture, God’s true grace Titus 2nd chapter teaches us to say “No to ungodliness.” God’s true grace changes us from the inside out. Now here’s what is so important I didn’t call the message counterfeit grace in my book because there’s a wonderful true message that they’re preaching but it’s been preached with exaggeration; it’s been preached with distortion; it’s been preached with error added in. So a lot of people just get the true part and they’ll say “My life has been changed by this message” I want to preserve that; I’m jealous for that; I don’t want to take away any good thing that anyone received. But when you mix anything with a little poison it can be deadly Sid.
Sid: You know one of the statements that I hear quite often and I believe we have to define this many say “I’m under the New Testament not under the Old; I’m not under the law anymore.” What would you say I walked up to you Mike and I said “I’m not under the law anymore.” What would you say?
Michael: I would say absolutely, number 1 you’re not under the law as a system of justification; you don’t have to keep this commandment, this commandment to be justified. We’ve been justified through faith in Jesus saying “God save me from my sins.” You’re not under the law as a system of justification; you’re not under the condemnation of the law that if you fail to keep the Sabbath one day there’s a death penalty of something like that. And you’re not under the law as a tutor, or a supervisor to bring you to the Messiah. This is all laid out in scripture; as a matter of face I get into this in detail in my book as well. So the law is no longer leading us to the Messiah; we have found the Messiah and we’re in Him. NOW under the New Covenant the law is written on our hearts. NOW under the new covenant we have a higher standard. The law said “Don’t commit adultery.” Jesus now says to us “Don’t lust in your heart.” The law said “Don’t murder, now Jesus grace says to us don’t hate in your heart.” So now we are supernaturally empowered to do what the law commanded us to do; we couldn’t before, it was written on a tablet saying “Do this, do that.” Now through grace it’s written in our hearts and that’s why Hebrew’s warns us “Don’t tamper with it because this is so much higher; so much more precious it cost Jesus His blood.”
Sid: Okay, if that’s true why don’t… since the law is written in our heart why don’t we just cut out our Old Testament and throw it away. Why should we even hang on to it?
Michael: Awe, do you know that one hyper-grace teacher of whom I quote in my book went as far as saying and I wrote to him and said “You still stand by?” He said “100%.” He said “The Bible Society,” I don’t know which Bible Society he meant, “made a terrible mistake when they put the Old Testament together with the New Testament it has terribly confused believers.” Sid I have chapters in my book talking about how the Old Testament is thrown out. And people say “No, no, no we can learn from it; we can learn from examples.” Well Paul writes in 1st Corinthians 10 to believers and said “Look at how Israel sinned.” Look at how adultery, sexual morality, and don’t do the same because these are warnings for us. Sid the Bible of the early church was quote the Old Testament that’s the only Bible they had. Paul preached grace based on the Old Testament; now people want to throw it out. That’s an ancient heresy that goes back to an early church leader who went heretical called Marcion and it goes all the way back to the 2nd century; it’s being revisited today. People are getting so caught up…
Sid: So the same spirit that was on this Marcion is on the hyper-grace teachers today.
Michael: Or at least the tendency to go in that same direction. There is one very well know TV preacher, author that he has a series a teaching series that contrast the God of the New Testament; the God of love and mercy with the God of wrathful God of the Old Testament. That is classic Marcion belief. So we need to recognize a serious root of error. Sid, I’ve read stuff. You know I read the Hebrew like other people read the English.
Sid: Listen, you provoke me to jealousy. Not only does he read the Hebrew but he has memorized a great deal of the Old Covenant in Hebrew. Is that correct?
Michael: Yeah and I’m provoked that there is a whole lot more that I want to memorize that I want to get in my heart and mind. It’s not that big a book when you really think about it. But Sid I read some quotes and here’s what happens, Preacher A says it and then 100 other people repeat it. I see verbatim book after book, teaching after teaching, they all say the same thing because they all think that Brother So and So researched it because he said the Hebrew said this and that. And it’s wrong!
Sid: (Laughing)
Michael: That’s absolutely false; that’s absolutely false. I think “What Bible are they reading?” And what grieves me is that some of these people are fine people with a fine message that could help so many. But they feel as if to really preach grace they have to go to this hyper-extreme. Some of them say “If it’s not too good to be true it’s not grace.” Well then here’s a logical question, “If there is a hell, if there’s future punishment, then it’s not too good to be true.” Some of them have gone off the deep end and say “That’s right everyone will be ultimately be saved because hey “It’s grace.” This is where it leads.
Sid: Don’t even some of them say the devil is going to end up being saved?
Michael: Yeah, there’s one fellow whose promote it; he used to promote a healthy revival repentance message. Then he began to preach hyper-grace and the moment that you try to interact you are Ishmael, I am Isaac, you are under the law and the flesh and I’m in the Spirit. And now he keeps going further and further and says “Why not, why not Satan being redeemed; why not these wicked spirits being redeemed?” Is there anything outside of God’s grace? Now 99% of the guys would reject that but that’s where it does when it goes untethered from scriptural truth.
Sid: You know Mike I am so excited to release your brand new book we are the first it’s called “Hyper-Grace” subtitled “Exposing the Dangers of the Modern Grace Message.” It’s 300 plus pages. But this is in my opinion the defining book for one of the greatest heresies that the church has had in modern times….
