SID: Hello. Welcome. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural. I’m so excited about our show because some 30 years ago, there was a problem that pervaded believers. It was called legalism. But you know what humans do? They rebel and they go from legalism to something new, which is called hyper grace. The grace message is wonderful, but the hyper grace message, I believe could be the End Time deception that will cause millions of people to fall away from God. You know, my guest Dr. Michael Brown and I go back some 30 years, and I don’t know a finer scholar in the world, on the planet. Dr. Brown has a degree from New York University in Semitic Languages. He speaks, reads and writes at least a dozen languages, memorized a great deal of the Old Testament in Hebrew. Dr. Brown, why are you talking all over the world about this hyper grace message that seems to be everywhere I see on television? I do know if anyone understands true biblical grace it’s you. I do know because he’s a Jewish believer in Jesus and I am, too. And as Jewish believers in Jesus, one of the greatest examples of grace is what happened to me when I found the Lord. I mean, I was just, like the Bible says, “A new creation.” How bad were you before you found the Lord?
DR. BROWN: Well I was a heroin-shooting, LSD-using, diesel gas-huffing, rebellious, proud 16-year-old hippie rock drummer, even stealing money from my own father, and thinking I was doing great, proud of my wickedness when God saved me in 1971, the end of 1971. And Sid, it was literal transformation. And the thing that really set me free, God had convicted me of my sin and making me feel miserable, showing me what a wretch I was and in opening my eyes to my real condition. And the night I realized how good He was, December 17th of 1971, just singing these little hymns, very different than my old rock music, these little ditty hymns, I got this incredible joy I had never known before, and I realized this is different than drugs, this is different than sports, this is different from relationships. This is the joy of the Lord. And it struck me, God loved me enough to wash me clean while I was in filthy. It says in Romans 5, “When we were yet sinners, Messiah died for us.” And here I got this mental picture I was covered in filth and grime, and Jesus washed me with his blood and put these beautiful white robes on me. And I was going back out and playing in the mud. And I said, that’s it, I will never put a needle in my arm again. And that was it, from that night on, set free by the power of God. And then I saw this internal change where I wanted to please God. I wanted to do right. It was now my nature to please him. So grace did this amazing thing. In a moment of time, I went from totally guilty to totally righteous in God’s sight. In a moment of time, I went from being a child of the devil to being a child of God. And it wasn’t based on how many good works I accomplished. It was based on receiving God’s goodness in my life. That’s the transforming power of grace. And because I love grace so much, I love pure true grace, I’m grieved over the distortions I see.
SID: Okay. What is, there’s a term that you use and you speak about it all over the world, hyper grace. What is that?
DR. BROWN: Hyper grace is exaggerated grace. People say, oh you can never exaggerate grace. Of course, you can. It’s grace with addition. It’s grace going beyond what the word says. It’s grace where you have to cut out whole portions of scripture. It is a mixture. It is polluted and distorted grace. Now here’s the thing. I don’t call it counterfeit grace because there’s a wonderful truth that many so called grace preachers are bringing, and that truth is liberating people. It’s setting them free from guilt and condemnation, and legalism. They realize they’re accepted because of what Jesus did and they’re free. There’s a wonderful truth, but it’s preached with addition, with distortion, with exaggeration. So there’s poison with it.
SID: What are you hearing around the world from this hyper grace message?
DR. BROWN: Well I’m seeing such reaction against holiness, such reaction against hunger and thirst for God, because that’s “doing” something. We don’t have to do anything. We just rest. Jesus has done it all. The finished work of the cross means there’s nothing left for me to do. So they preach against repentance. They preach against conviction of sin. They preach against the need to confess our sins. They preach against real accountability in your own life. That’s just legalism. That’s just commandments. You’re a grace hater, you’re a law preacher. You’re a Pharisee. That’s all [unintelligible]. So I see division. I see spiritual deception. I see people letting sin in their lives. Now here’s what’s interesting. The leading grace preachers, they will all say this is not a license to sin. They will all say grace empowers you not to sin. The problem is the other things they preach with it, the additions, the distortions, the mixture, the poison, it does give people license to sin and it takes away the dealings of God in our lives.
SID: Here’s the sad thing. Many people that were walking in true purity, in true holiness, as they get exposed to this message they, that’s all the devil needs, and they start doing things they would never have done before, and before you know it, they’re in absolute sin. And guess what? They don’t even feel the need to repent. We’ll be right back.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth