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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. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth,.
And today we have part two of the Sola Scriptura, Scripture Alone interview, conducted by Andy Olson from ECHOZOE, E-C-H-O-Z-O-E. I have life in Greek. You can go to his website and hear Phil Johnson on Sola Fide and other folks, and he interviewed me about the topic of scripture alone, and it is an important topic, especially these days when people have scripture plus experiences, scripture plus the church, scripture plus et cetera, and so you want to go to his blog and check it out.
It's ECHOZOE. Andy Olson interviewed me, and today we have part two, Sola Scriptura. I like what happened in the midst of all this Reformation issue, and I know you know the details. Catholic Church is going to excommunicate Luther and probably kill him if he doesn't recant, and then listen to Luther's Sola Scriptura without the Latin pronunciation.
What he says is basically Sola Scriptura when it comes to the authority and the sufficiency of scripture. Unless therefore I'm convinced by the testimony of scripture or by the clearest reasoning, unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted, and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the word of God, I cannot and will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience.
Here I stand. I can do no other. May God help me. Amen. And so I love Luther when he said that. By the way, I went to Germany, Andy, and stood on the spot where Luther said that.
The church is Yeah, I've been there too. Is that the plaza in Worms?
Yes, it is, and I was asking the guide that I had. I found a special guide down at the library because there was a little plaque there, Here I Stand, and I said, is this actually the plaque? And he said, well, this is the plaque, but the way the church was laid out, this couldn't have been the spot, but they put the plaque here because it was kind of shady for the tourists.
Yeah, that was interesting. I've been to Germany too, and I went to Wittenberg, and I went to the Wartburg Castle, and we went to Worms, and all those other places, there's a building you can go in the church that Luther preached in in Wittenberg, and you can go to the castle that he studied in in Wartburg, which is near Eisenach, I believe.
Yeah, good. But you go to Worms, and it's just a plaza. It's a little park. There's no church there or anything. It's kind of interesting. Yeah, just to the side there, I think there's some building. That was fun to cruise around.
I love the castle of Wartburg, and walking around. I was disappointed by Wartburg because they get into the history of the king that built the castle and some of the lore behind it and whatnot, and you go through this whole tour, and then you get to the end, and they say, oh yeah, if you're interested in that Luther room, just keep going.
It's down the hall. You'll see it on your way out the door.
Well, I must not have paid the same guy you did. I have an interesting thing. I don't know if our listeners would care about this or not, but I'll just take liberty to do it. They sold down in the bookstore at the Worms, at the Wartburg Castle.
Did you see those little frog demon god things? I don't remember that. Yeah, they've got these long arms. They look like the creatures that are on Wizard of Oz that would come and get Toto and The monkeys?
The flying monkeys? Yeah, they look like that, except they're made of their frogs, and they have, it looks like boxer shorts on there with blue and white pinstripes, and this was a representation of a weird, superstitious god that was during the time of Luther, and people would hang them around the house to keep the other worst demons out.
Strange. So I have one hanging in my house in Massachusetts that sometimes I show off. That's strange.
I bought a letter opener that looks like a sword, and that's about all I recall from the bookstore.
I mean, one of the things about Rome and getting back to Sola Scriptura, I think they underestimate the spirit of God and his work, not just in Revelation, not just in Inspiration, but also in Illumination.
You've got Rome who doesn't want the people to have the scriptures. They may say things differently now, but the spirit of God taking the word of God and inflaming the mind and heart and enlightening the conscience.
Listen to what Trent says. Furthermore, in order to restrain petulant spirits, it decrees that no one relying on his own skill shall in matters of faith and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine, resting, W-R, resting the sacred scripture to his own senses, presumed to interpret the said scripture contrary to that sense which Holy Mother Church, who it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, hath held and doth hold, or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the fathers, even though such interpretations were never intended to be at any time published.
I came across that as well. Sorry to interrupt you. Rome is afraid, and here's what Roman Catholic leadership is afraid of, that people will read their Bibles because if you read your Bibles, you will see the power of the scripture, the exclusivity of Christ, the doctrine of faith alone, that we have no other Savior but Christ Jesus and His mediatorial work.
They are frightened, and so I always say to my Catholic friends when they say that I'm reading my Bible, I say, great, keep reading because it is an explosive book and Rome is petrified, and they saw what happened.
They saw what happened when people got the Bible like Luther. They knew what would happen if Tyndale finished that publication as he did of the English text, of the Greek text in English. They are very, very frightened because then it's quickly and patently obvious that tradition teaches something different than the Bible does.
And I can't help but go to a verse that Protestants, for the most part, are very familiar with, Acts 17 .11, or rather Acts 17 .10 -12, where Paul is addressing the Bereans, and the Bible really commends that, that they didn't just take Paul's word for what he said, that they went and searched the Scriptures.
And saw whether or not what he was saying was true. Well, you think about that region there in Greece, and when you read 1 Thessalonians, you say to yourself, now that was a commendable church. Paul was very, very pleased with the work of God in that church, and yet here you have in Acts 17 a higher commendation that you just talked about with the Bereans.
And I always use a slogan, I probably stole it, Andy, but I always say discernment is, A, commended, Acts 17, and B, commanded, 1 Thessalonians 5. And so what happens to a person that gets their hands on the Bible?
They realize that Pope no longer has absolute authority. They realize that his jurisdiction is crumbling, and people will do about anything to keep power, especially unregenerate systems.
Well, we're moving along, and in the interest of time, I wanted to get into hermeneutics a little bit. How can we approach hermeneutics in regards to sola scriptura to be sure that we're interpreting Scripture correctly?
This Romwell protest that we can't be reading the Scriptures because we don't know how to interpret it properly.
Okay, well, if that's the case, then I would say quite a few things in no particular order. I think the clarity of Scripture would be attacked that somehow the Scriptures aren't clear and plain. And I think that the Scriptures are clear and plain.
John Chrysostom, he said, you have Scripture for a master instead of me. From there, you can learn whatever you would know. And that's in the Godfrey article. You can read the Scripture and easily say, oh, that's what that means.
That's what it says. Taking in light historical context and language context and time context and culture context, I have something called, Andy, the blue-collar hermeneutic. And that is people who had blue-collar jobs then and now, they tended to be the audience that Paul, for instance, would write to.
So when he wrote the circular letter called Ephesians, these people were not all scribes. They were not all seminary students, to use the vernacular of today. They were common people. We have an aggregarian culture.
Many could not even read. But once they heard the Scriptures and once they were in the temple and then at the New Testament churches, they could easily decide and determine, yes, if this is true or if it's not.
Rome would say, see, you're doing the same thing that we do, but I don't care what Rome says because I'll just go with what the Bible says. God has given himself, God has spoken clearly and plainly in Scripture.
Then to help us understand Scripture, the Spirit of God illumines Scripture so that we can understand it. And then furthermore, we have men who have been given the gift of teaching, Ephesians chapter four, a special supernatural gift bestowed sovereignly by the Spirit of God to help teach the Scripture so that we can understand them better.
And so you could have a Protestant that would say, you know what, it's just me and my Bible and the Spirit of God. Well, it's you and your Bible and the Spirit of God. And unless you're on a desert island, you have the local church that has teachers to help you understand.
But we are different than Rome. Rome would say, but we are the church and we'll tell you what to believe. We're trying to say, we have teachers in the local church to help you understand what the Scripture clearly says as you look at its authorial intent.
Well, I'm glad you put it that way because when I think about teaching in general, not just scriptural teaching, but academic teaching, one of the things that I learned in college is that a good teacher doesn't teach you the knowledge you need.
The good teacher teaches you how to acquire the knowledge you need. And I find that so much in a good church. Good church not only teaches me the Scriptures, but it teaches me how to approach the Scriptures.
Absolutely, what I tell the men all the time at the church that I'm training to be the future teachers of the church and pastors is I tell them when I preach, I have lots of goals. I have a goal to honor the Lord.
I have a goal to exalt Christ Jesus. I have a goal to exposit the text through consistent exegesis. But I have another goal too. And that goal is I am teaching the people every single Sunday how to study their own Bibles in context, authorial intent, seeing the sweep of redemptive historical views.
I mean, there could be all kinds of things that I'm trying to teach, but I'm trying to teach them that. And so you are right. And I think on the flip side, when I look at Rome, here's the Second Vatican Council, this tradition which comes from the apostles develops in the church with the help of the Holy Spirit.
For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. For as centuries succeed one another, the church constantly moves forward towards the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their fulfillment in her.
Well, what is that? How do I interpret what Rome even said there? They're trying to defend tradition, but tradition itself to them is morphing and taking clear focus, becoming more clear as time goes on.
So who's to say tradition now is going to equal tradition in a thousand years? And a matter of fact, that's already happened. Tradition changes, Roman Catholic Church changes. And for scripture, we know we have this fixed light, this fixed, unchangeable canon.
God has spoken, he's spoken clearly, and I'm just rambling.
That's all right, you're speaking truth, rambling truth.
Well, I would never say, I would say I am rambling. I wouldn't be like Pius IX, it would say I am tradition.
I think one area we discussed before we recorded in discussing this interview and setting it up that I think is really important to get into is I'd like to talk about some of the contemporary application of Sola Scriptura within the Protestant Church and where we find Protestants diverging from Sola Scriptura and how we can address that.
Good question, Andy, and we talked about that earlier and I'm glad you brought that up today. Many of your listeners, maybe most of your listeners would say, we believe in Sola Scriptura, we believe we have this once delivered faith and we don't need any tradition, we don't need any ecclesiastical authority, we don't believe in Sola Ecclesia, we don't believe in any of that.
And so we're good, we're golden because we believe the right things. Now, certainly I'm glad you believe the right things, but there is a contemporary way that Christians, many Christians, maybe even listeners today would do the same thing that Rome does, it's just a horse of a different color as people would say.
So here's what I mean. When people begin to add internal machinations like God told me, God revealed to me, God gave me an impression, God gave me some intuition, God told me something and his spirit testified to my spirit something, that it's not chapter and verse.
They do, charismatics do exactly what the Roman Catholic Church does. And that is put tradition, as the Catholics put tradition equal to scripture, charismatics and some non-charismatics for that matter these days, but they're functionally charismatic, they do the same thing.
God told me and they run with it, they have a decision to make and God said this and God said that, instead of saying, I'll trust the Lord with all my heart, I won't lean on my own understanding and all my ways I'll acknowledge him and he'll make my path straight.
No, I need more information and I need God to tell me. And so I think it's right to criticize Rome and to say we have scripture alone, yet I want people to be, I want to be consistent to say, I as a Christian now, as a Protestant, I don't need to have a liver shiver or some Christian clairvoyancy to make decisions, I have everything I need pertaining to life and godliness and I think when you say God talks to you in prayer, you are functionally denying sola scriptura.
That's a quote from Phil Johnson basically. So see, it might not be true if it comes from me, but if you quote an authority like Phil Johnson, it's true. So I think there's mysticism galore in the local churches these days and whether it's Blackabee and Experiencing God or Beth Moore with her contemplative prayer and God talking to you stuff, it's everywhere.
You're too young probably, Andy, to know of Lily Tomlin and she was a comedian. Do you know Lily Tomlin? I know who she is, yeah. Okay, she said when you talk to God, it's called prayer. When God talks to you, it's called schizophrenia.
And I thought that was very insightful because people want to know from God, yet God has made a decision not to tell us the details of life. He has given us a scripture and then we have to use wisdom, we have to use desire, we have to use wishes and then proceed, not presumptuously, but knowing that God will be there in the future if we make a bad decision.
Mysticism basically says, you know what, the Bible, it's okay, but we've got our own direct channel to God and that's never been the Christian way. That's never been evangelicalism. That is a different religion, actually.
I know Christians can do that, but B .B. Warfield said there's two religions in the world. One religion, you get revelation from outside of you, i .e. Christianity, a fixed canon of scripture, revelation.
And the other religion is the religion that says you can have scripture, something outside of you, in addition to something from your own spirit, how God talks specifically to you. And so B .B. Warfield would say, Christianity rests on external authority.
And so to answer your question, I think similarly to this free will issue, lots of people believing in free will exactly like Rome did. They're functional Catholics because they don't believe in the bondage of the will and the bondage of the will makes you a Protestant.
And that's the key issue when it comes to the Reformation, Luther's most important book outside of the Commentary to Galatians. So we say, ah, we believe in free will, but that's what the Catholics believed in.
Oh, well, we don't believe in tradition, but we have God telling us what to do when we're praying. I don't know about you, but I've never heard God speak to me in prayer and even if I did, I wouldn't trust it because why?
Here's the issue. I am fallen. I am sinful. I am not completely glorified yet. I'm not glorified at all, but I'm not completely sanctified yet. And so I can't trust my heart. This Disneyland theology that says, go inside and trust your heart.
I can't trust my heart. That's why I have the word. That's why I have elders. That's why I have a wife. That's why I have the local church to help me because I can't trust myself. And so anytime you look for, you know, truth inside feelings, imagination, visions, and other things and voices, then you are denying Sola Scriptura.
I've heard people compare that to, or describe that as a kind of a modern day manifestation of Gnosticism.
Yeah, well, and that sounds exactly what it's like. Edwards used to call those kinds of people that would go around saying, God told me all the time. He said, those kinds of people were quote, incorrigible, end quote, because how can you reason with that?
Well, God told me this, God told me that. Here's what they end up doing. You tell them, no, God didn't tell you because he's clearly said this opposite thing in scripture. Then they take what their impressions were and they elevate them over scripture because they'd rather hear the personal touch of God, the personal voice of God versus some old dry book.
And I don't know why it is. I do know why it is. It's just a figure of speech. But show me someone who is an expert in hearing from God and I'll show you somebody that doesn't know their Bibles. It is directly proportional.
The way you know your Bible will help you be weaned from any kinds of impressions and thinking that your intuition is infallible or is a revelation. So can you imagine people are thinking their intuition is revelation now.
And I just think that's nonsense. Do a little study of church history and you will soon find out that people that trusted their own hearts and what they thought was God speaking to them had disastrous effects, including George Whitefield, who heard from God that he was gonna have a boy, did have a boy.
And I think at four months old, he lost that boy named John to, the baby died. And he was told that that boy is gonna be a young boy named John, gonna be a great evangelist. And later he said, you know what, I took fancy.
I think the quote was, I mistook fancy for fiction. And anyway, it's bad. You don't wanna follow your heart. Ananias and Sapphira, Acts 5, they follow their heart. You don't wanna follow the peaceful feeling in your heart because church discipline, you might have to do, you don't get a peace there.
And Jonah was disobeying the will of God and he had a peaceful, easy feeling right down there in the bottom of the boat.
Well, I'm glad you linked that propensity to hear from God to your understanding of scripture because I was gonna ask you about that. Why does it seem like that seems to be almost ingrained in evangelicalism today that people hear from God?
I mean, it's just kind of part of our culture now. You almost expect it in most churches that people will say, I had such and such decision to make and God told me to choose this or.
Yes, some of it, Andy, is just sloppy verbiage. And they'll say, you know, God did this or God said that. And I think they're just sloppy when it comes to it. But others, they have been influenced. And so experiencing God in the 80s, Blackaby is a complete mystic and he says God speaks to you through impressions and that you should feel those things or you're not really experiencing God.
Bill Gothard, he talks about checks in your spirit and inner promptings. So we've got big people, Beth Moore. Beth Moore, once she gets to the Old Testament and starts teaching about your tent of meeting and God's going to talk to you and contemplative prayer, buying into all that stuff.
We have major evangelicals with major evangelical publishing companies backing them that are pushing subjective impressions as a fallible guide to doing and feeling. Hey, I'm all for feelings. I'm all for impressions.
I'm all for intuitions. I just don't trust any of them and I don't live my life based on those.
How could I? 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.
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