Evangelical Fads (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

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Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Mike Abendroth here.

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It is Tuesday, and therefore we have in the house, in the studio, in the office, in the study,

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Pastor Esteban Cunha. Gracias. De nada. Y todos somos, ya.

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Cuidado. Cuidado. Peligra, peligra. Lo siento, lo siento.

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Lo siento. Lo siento. Pass the cilantro, por favor.

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Today, we're going to continue our series from last Tuesday. And that series is this,

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Whatever Happened To. It's interesting when you see whatever happened to some musical group or some child actor, and sadly, many of them aren't doing too well.

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Some of them are, but not too many of them are. Similarly, these fads that come and go in the

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Christian church, matter of fact, even sub -Christian churches, because these apply to mainstream evangelicalism, mainstream liberal

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Christianity, et cetera, they pretty much are dead and gone. You can find them in the little dollar stores once in a while.

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You can find them for, I think, what do you call those, doorstops? Sure. That what you call those?

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Yeah, doorstops. How do you say doorstops in Espanol? Como se dice doorstops? Doorstopos.

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Yeah. Yeah. Peligra, peligra. You know what that means?

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It means danger. Oh, it does. What's the difference between that and cuidado, careful? Yeah, I don't know.

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I know. I guess peligra is a little more serious. What if you said cuidado, criatura? Careful, baby.

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So whatever happened to fads in evangelicalism and our purpose this afternoon in doing the show is that you would see the next fad that's coming down the pike.

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We don't know what it is, but whatever it is, that you would see it for exactly what it is, a fad, and then you would not buy into that fad, waste your money, waste your time.

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We want you to settle for only the best, and that is the transcendent God of the universe who is by anything, by any definition, not confined to a fad, but that you would be settled with the attributes of God, the nature of Christ, his death, his resurrection, et cetera.

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So that's what we're after. And so we're just showing you in the past what to look out for in the future. Wouldn't you think it would be safe to say,

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Pastor Mike, that much of the New Testament is written against kind of fad theology? You know, in other words, the new kind of wave, join this, join

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Judaism with Christianity, join this with Christianity, you know, add this, subtract that, you know, live your kind of Christianity on your own terms.

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You're right. It's almost, it's Hinduism in the sense where you say Jesus is good, but Jesus plus asceticism is better.

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Jesus plus mysticism is better. Jesus plus Jewish legalism is better. It's just always

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Jesus plus, and when you run into that algebraic equation, Jesus plus, you know it's going to equal zero.

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Run for the aisles, run for the exits, get out. That would be a time for an altar call. So whatever happened to last time, when we don't have to review them, we'll just tell them the names of what we did.

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Okay, we did the left behind series. We did. I found it. Yeah, I found it. We did, what would

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Jesus do? The prayer of Jabez. And we just briefly mentioned Amelia Grant.

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So now we'll look at some other, whatever happened to's. So you can actually learn from history, recent history, what not to do in the future.

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And that is somehow think that your life, that of course is difficult. Holiness is difficult.

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And don't you think, Steve, that people in light of working out their salvation with fear and trembling, knowing who they are in Christ Jesus, looking back to the gospel once again, and then working hard by the grace of God to be holy, that's too hard.

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So let's have some simple trinket, some simple book, some kind of fun thing to go together, to go through with a group, and that'll make my sanctification easier.

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They're playing on people's laziness. Sure, and I mean, it kind of, in some ways, reminds me of some of the diluting of the

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Christian message with regard to what we see in churches. You know, much like the time I got a postcard in the mail telling me that they wouldn't waste my time when

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I went to their church. And on Easter Sunday, they were gonna have clowns there. You know, how nifty, you know, and balloons for the kids.

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And it's the same kind of thing where they wanna make Christianity appealing to you.

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They wanna make it seem, like you said, easy and novel and not a waste of your time, and something that anybody can do in their own spare time.

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How about a church that would say, instead of, we're not going to waste your time, congregation, we're not gonna waste

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God's time. That would be excellent. With insipid little silly dances and dramas and people on the dance team with tight dresses with streamers running around doing some kind of dance improv.

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Yeah, yeah, or, you know, dance. I was part of the dance ministry. The what?

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Yeah, and what kind of qualifications do you need for dance ministry? In the churches that I've been at, like the Anaheim Vineyard, it was 15 to 18 years old, slender and wearing tight dresses.

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That's what that was. Is that a spiritual qualification? I didn't think it was. I just thought, what is going on?

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That must be in 1 Timothy 7. You know, the dance ministry must consist of. I'm all for dancing.

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I, you know, well, let's have some square dances at the church and have some wood, hay, and stubble over in the corner. What do

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I care? But in the worship service, this is worship. So let's not waste God's time with those things.

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I wonder what would happen, Steve, if the only thing we did at church was pray real long pastoral prayers, read scripture and preach.

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How many people would show up if there were no singing? Well, you know, if you throw in some hymns, maybe some, you know, kind of more modern music with just really solid lyrics.

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I don't think anybody'd come to that. Well, they come to Bethlehem Bible Church, but I wonder what their, that little piece of paper is everybody's slipping them from the parking lot attendance.

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Maybe that's some free car wash or something. Nice. Getting an oil change. Whatever happened to.

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Whatever happened to the 40 days of purpose. I can remember when those banners were like all over churches everywhere.

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You know, you couldn't drive around without seeing them. And you know, it's funny, Steve, first you see them at, you know, the Redeemer Church, and then it's

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Rock Church, and then it's Righteous Church, and then it's Right Wing Church, and then it's

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Right Wing Methodist Church, and then, you know, it shows up at the Catholic Church, and then it shows up at the

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Mormon Church, because it works. Oh yeah. And it's good for all people of all faiths can get, can benefit from the 40 days of purpose.

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It's true. The Muslims like the 40 days of purpose, and Rick Warren made sure he talked to them about that very issue.

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How about VBS? It's just like VBS. You have to market VBS to the lowest common denominator, so actually

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Episcopalians might buy it. We say that in love. There are some

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Episcopalians that I really respect. I haven't met any ones that I respect lately, but I'm sure some of the hardliners that stand for the word of God in Africa, and certainly the

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Anglicans like J .C. Ryle we'd like, but the 40 days of purpose is gone. It's over. It's kaput.

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Yeah. Why? Because it was too long. It was too long for the average person, and it was gospel -less.

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People say, I got saved from it. You know, somebody was robbing a gas station, and I showed him the 40 days of purpose, and the guy got saved.

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Well, I don't know what he got saved from or got saved unto, but if you don't have the resurrection of Christ Jesus and repentance and real definitions of sin,

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I don't know how you can get saved from that. It would be quite difficult considering that would be part of the gospel.

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If you don't hear the gospel, how do you get saved? That's a tough call. Well, maybe it's the trans -dispensationalist approach where you can get saved by Jesus, but you don't really know it's him.

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So you can start the book off, 40 days purpose, saying your life is not about you, and it's all about God and his glory, and then for 39 more days, systematically say the opposite.

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You can do that all you want, but it's just a fad. Sanctification is punctuated in the

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New Testament with words that require human responsibility. I am not saying that sanctification doesn't have anything to do with justification.

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What I mean by that is when you're justified in light of your justification, you work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

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Of course, we go back to the cross, but there are words like work, struggle, toil, put off, put on, and the

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Christians that I know best, like me, are lazy, and we need to be motivated, and 40 days of purpose isn't gonna motivate you.

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It's going to say, God loves you this much, his arms are wide open, and every drop of blood is another drop of blood that says,

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I love you, and you've got so much self -worth. That's the tone and the tenor. You know what the short answer to whatever happened to the 40 days of purpose is?

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The 41st day. That's the short answer to it. I mean, once it was over, you know, then what?

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Silence of the lambs. I never saw that show, by the way. Good for you.

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Translation, Steve Zott. Blessed art thou among men. All right, whatever happened to the 40 days of purpose, you know, it's just run its course, basically.

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Yeah. All right, next. Next, well, do you want to talk about this? Yeah, we can do that, that's fine.

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The Passion of the Christ. What happened to the movie, you know, the big fad, Mel Gibson directed,

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Jim Caviezel starring The Passion of the Christ. Well, I remember,

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I don't know if you were here or not, but I took a group of people to go see it at the discount theater down the street.

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You know, you can't pay full price. I wasn't around. You weren't here? No. Well, some of the other people, they wanted to rent the movie theater as an evangelistic outreach by Sidney.

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I'm just kidding. You should have seen Steve's eyes. You know, The Passion of the Christ, to Mel Gibson's credit, it was not based upon the

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Bible alone. Just like the Roman Catholics don't have their doctrine on the Bible alone, here you have the show based on the

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Bible plus a mystic woman's machinations. And so, of course it was going to be true to the

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Bible when the premise of the script was not based upon the Bible. Of course it wasn't going to be.

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Yeah, it wasn't going to be. So, when people say, oh, well, I didn't like this and I didn't like that.

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Well, I get that. But what do you do, Steve, when people say, yeah, but it says Isaiah 53 at the end. People get saved.

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They see that. Well, that's good. It's good that it had something biblical in it. Right? It's good that it's, it's good to be good and it's nice to be bad.

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Well, I mean, you know, if you watch enough false teachers, you know, eventually you'll hear some snippet of scripture.

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In fact, I was watching one here not too long ago online and he had so much scripture in there.

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And I actually wrote the person who asked me about him. I said, you know what? I think somebody could get saved listening to that, not his ministry in general, but listening to that, because there was so much scripture in there that there was enough of the gospel there,

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I think, for somebody to get saved. Absolutely. I guess the problem comes when the Bible verses that are true and active and living are set in the, are couched in a bunch of false things.

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And so that's how you denude the gospel is you couch it in all kinds of false terms and false paragraphs and false movies.

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Steve, years ago, when this movie came out, Al Martin, the fairly well -known Reformed Baptist pastor in New Jersey at Trinity, he implored his people, do not go see this movie.

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Really? Do not go see this because you'll - I've never seen it, by the way. You'll think of Jesus in ways that aren't depicted in the

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Bible. And the way you are supposed to know about Jesus is not based upon a movie or a face or a crucifixion scene or anything, but it's in the

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Bible. And so I thought that was interesting that Al said that. Now, looking back, he might've been right.

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He might've been right. You know, that movie had so, this is not the movie review. Boris and Becker give two thumbs up for the movie.

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It's not that, but you know, the focus in Catholic theology is human suffering. That's what it showed because you cannot depict the

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God -man bearing the wrath of God the Father. How do you depict that?

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Yeah, there's no way to show the burden of sin being borne by him, the wrath of God being poured out on him.

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There's no way to do that. Yeah, the only thing we see in the New Testament, or don't see, is light. You have darkness from noon till three in the afternoon, which is quite odd in the

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Middle East. And so you have judgment of God, often typified in the minor prophets by darkness.

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And so whether we like the movie or not, here's what we will say about the passion. It was a fad. And these churches,

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I drive by churches in Holden, and there'd be this big poster out and by the street. Passion of the

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Christ. You know, we're gonna special showing, invite your friends. Now, I guess if you have a free movie and then afterwards stand up and preach the real gospel,

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I guess you could do that. But the shows come, the show's gone. And that's what always happens.

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I remember once going with my good friend, Tony. Hi, Tony, how are you? We went out to see some movie, and it was about, you know, what if Jesus was born today kind of thing.

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It was absolutely horrible. I mean, we went to the theater and saw it, and Peter had like one arm, the guy who played

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Peter. It was terrible, absolutely horrible. But I mean, this is what happens when people go, hey, people are too busy to read the

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Bible. So what if we put it in a movie, then people will get saved? Well, maybe, and maybe they'll just go, that was a really bad movie.

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Critics aside, there are some critics, and I might even have some critical comments, but this is a lot different than the

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Jesus movie. The Jesus movie, the Campus Crusade for Christ movie, that thing I don't think has run its course yet.

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It is continuing to be broadcast all over the world, and I don't know how many different languages trying to be faithful to the gospel of Luke or whatever it was.

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That's a movie that so far has not run its course, and I like that a lot better.

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So not a fad then? I don't think that's a fad. Okay, good. That's right. All right, what's up next? Mike Abendroth and Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio, whatever happened to evangelical fads?

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And openness theology, and I, you know, I think it's somewhat of a fad.

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I mean, it certainly is new on the scene or relatively new and now seems to not be so popular because here's the basic premise of openness theology, that God is learning, that God doesn't know everything, and that he's just as surprised as you and me at, you know, some of the things that, you know, it's like, wow, who knew that Steve was going to do that?

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And God's just kind of amazed by what some of his creatures are doing. Well, you have basically openness theology as an extension of hyper -Arminianism and a desire from people to have the will of God, subservient to the will of man, and you've got to exalt the freedom of man.

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And so what's the logical conclusion? At least the openness of God people carried it all the way out. If you're going to have man's will free,

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God doesn't know. Then God's will has to be bound, right? I mean, if he's too much of a gentleman to intervene, then, you know, the end result is he's too much of a gentleman to do anything, but just kind of stand by and observe.

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He's just shocked at everything that's going on. I love that picture back in the gospel according to Jesus days,

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John MacArthur, and it shows the Jesus gentleman and, you know, the door, will you let him in when he's knocking?

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And the door's about halfway open and it's got his feet there. And I just thought that was so classic, the gentleman

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Jesus. Yeah, he's a persistent salesman. I mean, just blasphemous, this whole idea, this concept that God somehow binds his will or that he's learning anything.

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I mean, if God is not omniscient, the whole Old Testament, so much of it is written from the perspective of not only is

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God omniscient, he's omnipotent, meaning he knows everything. And because he knows everything and because he's ordained everything, he brings everything to pass by his own power.

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He is all powerful. Well, these are scholars that write about the openness of God should know better because what they do is they'll try to take some figures of speech, anthropomorphic speech, anthropopathic speech, speech used to describe

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God, but in human terms, because we're trying to describe the infinite God, for instance, in Jonah, where God repented, it says in one translation, he relented.

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And so they'll try to take things like that and create a whole theology out of a figure of speech to somehow close

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God in because they don't want God in this box called the sovereignty of God overall. And what

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I'd like to know, Steve, is those who subscribe to the openness of God, my guess is they have family members, immediate family members, who have strayed from the truth, who have abandoned the truth, who never knew the truth, and they are trying to create a theology to allow those people in.

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And they will then create a God who will save those kinds of people. But that's just my own opinion.

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Well, I think that's probably true. And it also is a kind of a theological perspective that really just wants to exalt man and dethrone

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God. And it's really not only unbiblical, it's unglorifying, and at its greatest extent, it's blasphemous.

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Okay, good. Let's keep this ball moving. The next, whatever happened to...

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Whatever happened to the TNIV? The TNIV. Are you TNIV positive?

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You stole my line. I know. You stole my line. Well, the TNIV is the today's version of the new international version published by Zondervan.

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And today's new international version was telegraphed.

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You know, in basketball, you and I both like basketball. And if you look at the person you're passing to and the defense sees that, that's called a telegraph pass, and then the defender steals it.

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And so you can telegraph things ahead of time in the press too, to see the initial reaction.

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Will they like it? Will they not? People do this with movie theater trailers and all that. And so they telegraphed the

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TNIV years ago, and there was an uproar. My guess is 10 years ago, 13 years ago, a huge uproar.

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They had to recant some things because they got caught in a lie, and then they put it out again here recently.

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And so whatever happened to it, I have no idea. Yeah, but it didn't... I mean, at one point the NIV had what, 30%,

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I think, according to this article, 30 % market share. And they thought, hey, let's really expand our market share by doing the

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TNIV. That's like the new Coke. Yeah. You already are blowing away Pepsi, but you need a little bit more.

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Sure, gotta control the whole deal. And you know what? If we've got the evangelical world reading the

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NIV, maybe we can get the kind of left -leaning evangelicals and even the liberals with the

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TNIV. Well, we don't really care if it says man in the Bible. Let's just change it to women.

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And once in a while, some of these male -specific pronouns need to be male -specific. For instance, 2 Timothy 3, verse 16, all scripture is

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God -breathed and is profitable. It's profitable for all kinds of things. Why? That the man of God should be equipped so that the man of God may be equipped.

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And so how does this man of God become equipped? Through the word of God. What is the man of God? What if you say the people of God?

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Well, then you don't say to yourself, oh yeah, the man of God, that's an Old Testament prophet like Jeremiah, the man of God.

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What about the person of God? You know, so it could be either male or female. I mean, who are you to say that women should not be teaching?

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It said here, it changes singular pronouns to plural. It removes male -specific meaning in the original

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Greek texts, eliminates son -sons using children -people. Well, I don't know, what do you think its market share is right now, the

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TNIV? Pretty minuscule because, you know, liberals didn't really cut into it.

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It wasn't liberal enough for them and evangelicals rejected it wholesale. I wonder in the next few years,

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Steve, with the ESV out and its excellent marketing program and campaign and publishing arm,

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I wonder how much damage it's gonna do to the NIV. Substantial, I would think.

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The TNIV does not distort scripture, says Mark Strauss, professor at Bethel Seminary and author of Distorting Scripture.

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I don't think he's doing, he hasn't come up with that. But that's a title of a book that he wrote about other people.

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Every word in Greek as in English has a range of potential meanings. The biggest issue for opponents is the generic he.

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They're imposing English meaning on Greek words. Well, you can buy the

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TNIV if you'd like, but you won't probably find too many here. Yeah, I don't really go for that.

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I mean, it's this whole idea. I mean, really, it's a step toward liberalism, this idea that you can address

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God as mother if you would like, that God isn't necessarily a male or shouldn't be called he.

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Remember, we'd go to the CBD books? Sales. Sales. Yeah, warehouse sales.

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Once every quarter, the warehouse sales, 7 a .m., and then they have some reference books and they have some other books and homeschool material,

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DVDs, and then they have really low budget books. And every time that I had, every time

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I would go there, it's been years since I've been, just too old to get up that early to drive up there.

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They'd have a book called, Is It Okay to Call God Mother? And so I would pull that book out and I would show it to anybody who was around me.

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I didn't, you know, what church they were from, who knew? And then I would just say, no, it's not okay to call

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God mother. I was just shocked, you know, because my background, I would occasionally find Mormon books in there, you know, and just go, how did this get in here?

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You know, I mean, this is just not right. Well, CBD isn't a fad or a trend, but we could talk about that another time.

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Let's just finish up, Steve, so we can have a little bit for next show. Why the gospel should be, why books that focus on the gospel should be studied instead of these things that are, you know, ephemerally pass away?

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Because what is most important, because we do have, Peter would tell us, we do have a tendency to forget, we need to be reminded.

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What we need to be reminded of is the gospel, the great God of our salvation, the finished work of Christ, our helplessness apart from that finished work and apart from the grace of God, and our need to then tell others about this great

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God who saved us and who can also save others. That is the key. We aren't anti -everything.

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We're just today anti -fads so that you don't exchange the glorious buffet of the gospel for some gruel that you would get at Dachau.

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That's what we're after. You've got the gospel and you've got everything you need. The Bible is sufficient.

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The spirit of God is sufficient. And just study the scriptures and you'll say to yourself, the glories of the gospel, that a sinner like me would have

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God give himself for our sins that he might rescue us from this present evil age.

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That's Galatians 1. That should blow your mind right there. And so often we forget critical components, the resurrection and all these things, and it's by repetition, learning the gospel over and over again.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE in staff or management.