Politics and Scott Brown

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

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

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Politics, Scott Brown, and the Christian View of Government

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm your mayor.

And I'm the town manager.

We wanna talk about politics today. I don't know why this is not a political show, but we want you to think biblically about politics. We actually received a phone call this week, and the phone call was asking us why aren't we going to talk about Scott Brown?

What was the actual phone call?

Well, he just wanted to talk about how Scott Brown kind of fits into the picture of godly leadership, and how important godly leadership is for our country. Well, that's interesting.

So I guess the rest of the time today, Steve, we talk about the savior, Scott Brown. What is a Christian view of politics? What do Christians do when they have leaders that they like or they don't like?

What's the view of submission? We can talk about all that today. People are, I think, universally, if you're a Republican, rejoicing in the fact that Scott Brown got elected. Steve, how should we think about that biblically?

Well, I think we just need to understand that God raises men up, God takes them down, and obviously it was God's will expressed through the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for Scott Brown to be elected to the Senate.

Ooh, that was pretty pithy.

In 1883 in Allentown, New Jersey, a wooden Indian, the kind that you see in front of the old cigar stores back in those days, was placed on the ballot for the justice of the peace. The candidate was registered under the fictitious name of Abner Robbins.

When the ballots were counted, Abner won over incumbent Sam Davis by seven votes.

And I think this coming November, he'd have a pretty good shot, too.

1938, same kind of thing happened. The name Boston Curtis appeared on the ballot for Republican committeeman from Wilton, Washington. Actually, Boston Curtis was a mule. The town's mayor sponsored the animal to demonstrate that people know very little about their candidates.

He proved his point, the mule won. Oh, it's true.

And don't even get me started on this because I think there should be some kind of threshold you have to meet before you can vote. I mean, most people don't even know anything.

Would that be have a driver's license, enter the military?

Well, know something about the government. I mean, how many people, if you were to ask, how many people would know who the Speaker of the House is? But I digress.

Well, our people at our church know because every Sunday turns into D. James Kennedy Sunday, and that is we give the political ballots out, vote here, circle in lead pencil, circle number two.

Because the focus is on the election.

Remember, listeners, you, if you're a Christian, while you should vote, you have a civic responsibility and may I say quite a privilege to vote. But whether you're under communism, socialism, fascism, Nazism, or capitalism, or any other kind of ism or schism, you have to obey God.

God is clear in his commandments. And so we want to talk a little bit about that today, how we have a soteriological agenda. What is that soteriological agenda? What does that mean?

That's a fine question. Well, it means, and I think we talked a little bit about this in the past, but it means that our passion is for souls and not so much for politics. We want to be preaching the gospel because that's the means by which people get saved.

Can I just say something? Yes, I can, of course. But with regard to Just say it well. Yeah, there's so much drama and rightfully so about the tragedy in Haiti. And yet, if we were to go in, we were just talking about this off the air, if we were to go in there and rebuild the entire country and we were to make it some kind of nirvana, you know, heaven on earth, and those people still live to be 65, 70, 75 years old and then died and went to hell, what ultimately would we have accomplished?

I think MacArthur is right when he says, Steve, and we've heard him say it many times, you can be a Republican or a Democrat and you still go to hell when you die if you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, if you have not been born from above, if you're not a born-again, quote-unquote, Christian, you're not going to heaven.

And so isn't there something bigger on this earth than are Republicans in, are Democrats in, are Independents in, is Ross Perot in? Yes, the answer is Ross Perot. Remember that? Yeah, I do.

You know, he used to say, a billy goat on the side of a mountain does not make an economy. You know, I mean, he had all kinds of goofy sayings that nobody understood and pie charts.

It was interesting, at Bethlehem Bible Church this last Sunday, we don't know when we'll air this show, but the last Sunday, according to our time, Bible standard time, Pastor Steve got up for pastoral prayer and scripture reading and he read Psalm 2 and then prayed about how we should be trusting not in kings and horses and power or whatever it is, but we'll trust in the Lord.

And then I was preaching and we didn't, we were not in humanistic cahoots or in this together, but I think it was the Spirit of God both, Spirit of God moving both in my heart and Steve's heart to tell the congregation, to teach the congregation that Scott Brown, he might be a fine man, and I don't know really much about his person.

I like his politics compared to the opposite aisle politics, but Scott Brown is not the Savior. Probably Scott Brown actually needs to get saved.

Well, I mean, there's no indication of anything that he said while he was on the campaign trail that he's a Christian. So, I mean, you know, the evangelical world's all smitten with him and I think it has more to do with the alternative than it really does to do with the belief system of Scott Brown.

As I've seen, I've read many things that would say that he's pro-choice. And then I, but on the other hand, I know that he has voted on a number of occasions to limit abortion with regard to partial birth abortion.

He wants parental notification, you know, some common sense things that even unbelievers who would support the right of a woman to kill her baby, most people's stomachs are turned by partial birth abortion.

Whoever rules, God has ordained that rule. And I think of Daniel praying, Steve, when he said, let the name of God be blessed forever and ever for wisdom and power belong to him. I don't think of too many commentators, even on Fox News, that said that after Scott Brown was elected.

Maybe they were praising God or something praising Scott Brown, but Scott Brown does not change the times and epics. Scott Brown does not remove kings and establish kings. Scott Brown does not give wisdom to wise men.

And Scott Brown does not give knowledge to men of understanding. We need to look through and past individual leaders, Christians or not, Republicans or Democrats, to see the sovereignty of God in political lives of countries.

Well, I mean, if you were a Democrat on election day and Scott Brown won, you're dejected. If you're a Republican and he got elected, you're elated. Same with Barack Obama. You just go, let's think about this.

Ultimately, who's in charge? And as Christians, that's what we need to be thinking about. We should not be worried about all, ultimately, all these political things will have some impact on our life short-term.

But we need to be thinking long-term. We need to be thinking about the souls of the people who are around us and focus a little bit less on our taxes and other issues. That's a good point.

Submission to Governing Authorities and the Church’s True Mandate

I think at First Peter, as Peter is writing to the people there, and he said, number one, form a Christian action committee. Vital. Because Nero was quite bad. He said, number two, make sure you have lots of Christian lobbies because you need to influence Nero.

He also said, because of Nero's henchmen, you need to have some Christian watchdog groups.

To watch Nero. And Christian rifle associations and all that, to stand up against the power.

Yes, we need some Christian lawyers because you need Christian lawyers to combat that. Now, I'm not against Christian lawyers. I'm not against Christian lobbyists or Christian watchdog groups. But what did Peter say underneath the ungodly Nero?

Submit yourselves. That's what he said, submit. So we submit whether it's Barack Obama as president or Ronald Reagan as president.

Yeah, or Nero as the Caesar. The point is, if we understand that God appoints our leaders, God ultimately, through human means, yes, but he is the one who selects our leaders. And we, by obeying and submitting to our leaders, are obeying and submitting to God.

So many Christians run around, what's God's will for my wife?

That's what I like to know. What's God's will for my life? For such is the will of God, submitting to human institution, government institution, that by doing right, you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.

You wanna know what God's will is for your life? God's will for your life is to submit to the governing institutions and do everything they say until they tell you to sin, and then you submissively disobey.

And I just like to get back to even the caller's idea about godly leadership and how important that is to a nation. Even based on what you were saying on 1 Peter, the idea of Nero and whatnot, where would we get that idea, that godly leadership?

If we look through the Old Testament, the New Testament, it's pretty rare that the people, even in Israel, had godly leaders. They had a lot of ungodly leaders who led them into idolatry and all manner of things.

And it was God who was faithful, and it was men who were consistently unfaithful.

Well, you know, People's Trust in Politics reminds me of People's Trust in Touch by an Angel show. It's kind of, you know, it's a Christian show, sorry that it doesn't mention sin, redemption, the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, or Jesus Christ, but it's Christian, all right.

Same thing, we somehow think that based on a candidate being elected or not elected is going to influence the nation, and it will be a moral nation. It will have moralities without a definition of sin, Jesus, redemption, ascension, and resurrection.

People have to realize that America is building their house on the sand, and the fall's going to be great. It's just a matter of when.

Christian nation, I mean, that is such an interesting concept. You know, the Founding Fathers, most of them were not Christians. If we look at our, I don't care what survey you look at, you know, it'll say 80, 85 of Americans are Christians, and you just say, really?

Because then if you start asking them questions about what they believe, and even what should be the law of the land with regard to really plain issues like abortion, you're going to find out that most people don't really hold up to what the Bible says.

They don't want what the Bible says, and so are you a Christian if you disagree with the Bible? I don't think so.

Listen to what Lutzer said, Steve. You'll find this fascinating. The fact that only about 10 of the population attended church during the time of the American Revolution is proof enough that America has never been distinctively Christian.

I would agree with that. Now our Founding Fathers and the constitutional writers and amendment writers and these kind of people, Bill of Rights, they were informed by a biblical worldview of right and wrong based on a definition of right and wrong outside themselves.

We grant all that, but we're saying Democrats, Republicans, Reform Party, Green Party, Greenpeace Party, they don't have anything to do with godliness because changes in administration will not help the moral calamity and chaos in a nation.

No, I mean, have we ever seen and will we ever see some president get up and basically evangelize? Here would be an amazing thing, heading into the State of the Union address, whenever that is. Was. Is, was, will be.

Is the president going to get up and proclaim the gospel? No, not unless something radical has happened to him that we're not aware of. And what a shocking moment that would be. I think you said the other day, if he were to do something like that, the people who support him the most right now would all of a sudden be booing him.

They would be jeering him and telling him to be quiet.

I think George Soros would probably buy a million effigies to spread around the country so they could all hang him in effigy. All right, tell me what you think of this, Pastor Steve. Martin Luther, quote, I would rather be governed by a wise Turk than a stupid Christian.

Well, I mean, there's a lot of truth to that. The function of government is not to spread Christianity. The function of government is to govern, is to rule well. It's to be fair. It's to be even handed.

It's to look out for the interest of its people and not in any way, shape or form to propagate the gospel. It's really great when it doesn't hinder the propagation of the gospel, but the purpose of government is not ultimately soteriological, it's not for salvation.

That's right, it can't be. If you've got to pick the right representatives to pass the right legislation to somehow think then that will give you the right society, then you have the wrong view, a flawed view, an unbiblical view of sin and how the Bible says that no sins are forgiven.

And so by definition, politics, like psychology, has the wrong view of sin and man. Therefore, any solution it offers, it's going to be less than some kind of salvation solution. We aren't anti-government.

I quite like government compared to anarchy. I was in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots and I'm glad for anarchy, I'm glad for anarchy. My phone's buzzing and it's the second time it happened today when the phone buzzes, I lose track of my thoughts.

So we don't want anarchy, but we're just trying to say that politics isn't the savior and neither is Scott Brown.

Well, and let me, yeah, it's throwing me off too. Let me put it another way. I was also in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots and I was part of trying to reestablish order and it was absolute chaos and you don't want that.

But if we were to look over history and we were to look at the places where government has tried to impose moral order, okay, let's just talk about prohibition. How did that work? Let's talk about outlawing homosexuality.

How did that work? Let's talk about outlawing abortion. How did that work? You cannot change the hearts of men and women with laws. That does not work.

You know, Steve, I just was thinking about this. We have enemies in ministry. We have enemies, you know, maybe in our neighborhood who knows where. We have enemies in ministry? We do. Okay. Okay, I think we do.

Somewhere out there there's gonna be somebody who's mad at me. Somebody who doesn't like you. They all like me though. There can be enemies for the sake of the gospel. Paul talks about that in Philippians.

But here's my question. Most evangelicals that I know are Republicans. Why would they be so pro-Republican that that makes them kind of the right guys, the good guys, the guys with the white hats? And then we make the Democrats the enemies when the real enemies are the spiritual forces of wickedness.

The Democrats are not enemies. Liberals are not the ultimate enemies. Even abortion doctors are not the ultimate enemy. And I think this gives us this political view. You're either a bad guy or a good guy.

Gives us this wrong view of who the enemies are. These are lost people.

Yeah, and again, it is just pointless to try and legislate morality, to try and force people to do the will of God or to be better people. That's not going to further the gospel. It's not going to change the hearts of men.

And ultimately, it's not how we should waste our energy. I mean, how much money could the church pour into political campaigns? And if we got an entire Republican Congress, how much would the country change?

And the answer is not all that much.

I mean, I thought Ronald Reagan was a very interesting president, but I don't see some kind of Christian revival after Reagan being in office for eight years. If there was a revival, it was a Finney-like revival, and it wasn't really true.

It didn't last. It wasn't some Asahel Nettleton revival. The problem in the society today, just like 2 ,000 years ago, is sin. God's solution for the society's problem of sin is found through the local church, where she proclaims Christ as the only savior of sin.

God's vehicle for spiritual problems? The church. So why would the church exchange her mandate, the gospel, for political chicanery?

It has, again, it has never worked. It can't work. All that it really does, ultimately, is stir up resentment toward the church and then, tangentially, toward the gospel. What do I hear all the time when I interact with unbelievers?

Well, you know, you just wanna impose kind of your Ten Commandments worldview on everybody else. And if you had your way, we'd live in a theocracy. I really have no interest in that. I'm not a Reconstructionist.

That's what it means to kind of impose God's law on everyone. I think that's a complete waste of time. The law has a purpose. And the law's purpose, God's law's purpose, is to show us we can't live up to it and that we need a savior.

Is it okay for Christians to vote?

Absolutely. How about voting for people that believe in abortions? If somebody came to you and said, I'd like to vote, I'm a Republican, but I can't really vote for this man or woman because my conscience won't let me because they are not pro-life.

No, I mean, the Scripture's clear. You don't wanna violate your conscience. We have consciences that's a God-given gift. And when we ignore them, we, in effect, sear or scar or really weaken the conscience.

I want my conscience to be fine-tuned. I want it to be in line with the way God thinks about things so that when I go to do something, I want fire alarm bells. I want it to be a clanging in my head so that I'm steered away from sin.

So if someone tells me they don't think they can vote for a candidate who is pro-abortion or what have you, then I say, don't do it. Just don't do it. On the other hand, if a Democrat was legitimately anti-abortion, strongly so, I mean, I look at some of the issues they're having right now in the House of Representatives, and apparently there's a sliver of Democrats in there that are very against abortion.

And so, you know, perhaps a Christian might be able to vote for one of those.

So you're saying you could go against your conscience and vote for a Democrat?

Well, I'm saying that if it came down to a pro-abortion, I don't like to call them pro-choice. They're pro-murder. They're pro, you know, if there was a pro-murder Republican versus a pro-life Democrat, I would be really either wanting to sit home or vote for the Democrat.

That's right. For me, it's not a matter of pragmatism. And I say, well, I like this person who's a Republican and he's pro-life, I mean, pro-choice, but I don't like this Democrat who's also pro-choice.

And so I'll go ahead and vote for the Republican. I just don't vote for someone unless they're pro-life because if you're going to try to hide behind pro-choice because you need votes, then I just don't want to give you my vote.

And so that's what my conscience would say. And sometimes I think, oh, I sure would like to vote for the guy, but I just can't do it. But when we think about those kinds of issues, I think there's something more important than even voting for.

And that is, as 1 Timothy says to Paul to the pastor, and that is to pray for those in authority, kings and all those, that they might be saved. And so I think all these people running around protesting people ought to spend their time praying for the salvation of President Obama and all those in his cabinet and everyone else that they can think of who aren't Christians.

You want to talk about earth shattering. I mean, forget about Scott Brown being the 41st Senator against healthcare, you know, whatever that means ultimately. But just imagine, here's a change that would change the face of America in one day.

Barack Obama becomes a Christian. Barack Obama has his eyes open and sees Christ for who he really is and himself for who he really is. And watch what would happen to this country, transformed overnight in terms of its governance.

Anyway, we would go from a country going who knows where to one where the focus would be on the gospel. That would certainly be a conversation worth having.

We haven't heard from Rahm Emanuel lately. Would we hear from him after that?

Oh, yeah, we'd see his resignation the next day. I mean, it would be interesting to watch the circle of people around the President just kind of change. They'd try to impeach him is what they would do.

Yeah, or try to force him to resign, certainly, yeah. Biden in or Pelosi.

God's Sovereignty Over Kings, Presidents, and Election Outcomes

Here's the good news is, here's the good news. If God doesn't save Barack Obama now, he still can make Barack Obama do whatever he wants. Proverbs 21 .1, the king's heart is like the channels of water in the hand of the Lord.

He, the Lord, turns it wherever he wishes. And although the President is the most powerful man on the face of the planet, kings, I think, probably were more powerful in those days in terms of at least just innate power because they didn't have a legislative branch or judicial branch.

And so if God can use heathen King Cyrus, I think he can use unbelieving presidents like Obama or Reagan or anybody else.

Yeah, he used Cyrus for the purpose of his people, Israel, he released him so they could go rebuild the temple. He hardened Pharaoh's heart. I mean, the greatest example, I think, in the Bible of how God is sovereign over individual lives is if we look at the life of Paul, also known as Saul, a blasphemer, a prosecutor of the church and transformed into her greatest messenger other than the Lord himself.

And so God does what he wants with whomever he wants. He is sovereign, and that is the message that we want to proclaim to you, not to get all caught up in political things.

Good, well, if you spend all your time, machinations and thought process on politics, real politics, real clear politics,.

That's all you do. Phonypolitics .com.

We want you to spend your time looking at this God who has given authority to these people and not anyone else. And so we're glad you vote. We're glad you pray. We're glad you listen to No Compromise Radio.

We've got 10 seconds, Steve.

Are you glad for anything else? I'm always glad when people listen to No Compromise Radio. Our ratings are through the roof.

Closing Credits and Station Disclaimer

No fairness doctrine allowed. None. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. 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.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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