Westminster Confession of Faith

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, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. It is Saturday, I don�t know, what is it, February 9th or something like that? I think we�re about three weeks away from the Shepherds� Conference.

If you want to write me, you can, info at nocompromiseradio .com. I just got a couple of emails the other day. For a long time, we had tons of emailers writing, and most of it was negative. Since we�re not on this radio station anymore in Worchester, I don�t get as many negative things.

I think they thought if they called the station enough, they could get us off, and eventually that happened five years later. I just didn�t really want to pay the $14 ,000 to be on that radio station anymore.

It cost a lot of money. Bad news is, lots of people came to the church because they would listen, and then they realized, �Oh, somebody�s out there telling the truth. I mean, other people tell the truth, of course, but anyway, that�s that.

What else is happening? Anything else going on in my life? Let�s see. My wife and daughter are out in California for a mother-daughter retreat, father-mother retreat. I was explaining something to someone the other day, and I was trying to talk about my wife.

I said, �My mom. I know I must be grandpa, but if I�m calling my wife mom, I mean, I might say to one of my kids, �Hey, your mom said this or, �Your mom would like you to do that or, �Be nice to mom or whatever, but when I look at her and call her my mom, mom is fine.

My mom, that�s another story. Yeah, so for the future, like I said, I was talking to Samuel Johnson, and it looks like Colossians I�ve got to figure out and get that out. Hopefully, that�s by the end of this year, probably just be Amazon Create Space since Zondervan has passed on their rights to publish Colossians.

Working on that. Off to New Zealand in May for the Impact Bible Conference. I want to say that might be the largest evangelical conference in New Zealand, I�m not exactly sure. A friend of mine, Scott Artavanis, and I will be there preaching on the Holy Spirit, my four topics on Terry said he has to go to the Shepherd�s Conference just to get that hoodie, so this is hoodie radio right now.

I don�t know what this is they gave me a free I spoke there, they gave me a free golf shirt, and I just said, �Thank you and then I went to the bookstore and I said, �You know, I was given this free golf shirt because I just spoke at the chapel and, �If I can exchange it, that�s fine, but do you think I could exchange it for something of equal or lesser value what was the Holy Spirit�s role?

How does the Spirit of God apply what happened in eternity, and how does the Spirit of God apply what happened in eternity, and how does the Spirit of God apply what happened in eternity? So, the message is for the Holy Spirit conference, it�s not going to be a strange fire kind of anti-thing, it�s going to be more positive.

The Holy Spirit and the eternal decree, i .e., the Pactum Salutis, the covenant of redemption, what was the Holy Spirit�s role? Explicit? Implicit? How does the Spirit of God apply what happened in eternity past, when the promise was between the Father and the Son, I think Psalm 110.

Holy Spirit and sovereign regeneration, that would be Titus 3 and John 3. The Holy Spirit and assurance, to what degree does the Holy Spirit give you assurance, and are you a Catholic when it comes to assurance?

In other words, you don�t get it unless you�re Mary, Paul, or somebody, Peter, Paul, Mary. And then the last message is, what if the Holy Spirit left your church? And that message is set up in such a way that I�ve had lots of people in my life in ministry say you don�t believe in the Holy Spirit.

What they mean is, we don�t have bass drums, and we don�t have a bass, you know, in terms of a guitar that�s really loud. We don�t have a lot of Holy Spirit talk and acts in 1 Corinthians 12 -14. They don�t really understand what is the role of the Holy Spirit, and He, the Holy Spirit, has a big role in the church, and I would go so far to say, it�s easy to say, if the Holy Spirit leaves your church and your church continues to go on just like it did before, there�s a major problem.

Anyway, that�s that, and let�s see what else is happening. Shepherds Conference, I should be there on Tuesday of the Shepherds Conference, and I think that�s the day Sinclair Ferguson is preaching, so I don�t want to miss that.

Wednesday I�ll be down in Escondido with the Amazing Grace folks, the Abounding Grace people, and I think you know who those two guys are. By the way, if you don�t listen to Abounding Grace, I listened yesterday, I don�t know, I was traveling.

I listened to six shows, maybe seven. That is a great radio show, Fridays with Clark, and he�s in the Book of Romans. You ought to listen to Abounding Grace Radio. All right, well, what�s up for today on No Compromise Radio?

Seminary Paper on the Westminster Confession

I was supposed to kind of go over my Hebrews message that I�m preaching tomorrow, Hebrews 7, but I didn�t bring my iPad, and I could use my phone because I�ve got the data there, but then I couldn�t do the Facebook Live thing, so I was going through my old papers for seminary when you used to have to type them, and so here�s a paper I�m showing the Facebook people.

I�m sure it�s backwards. I�m not trying to show you because I got did I get an A? I think that�s just like a check, so look what it says. It says, �Mike Avendroth, Box 121, Historical Theology 2, March 31st, 1993.

So, how many years ago was that? Seven and nineteen. What�s seven and nineteen? Twenty-six years ago. I wonder what I believed 26 years ago, and have I made any progress, right? I was reading 1 Timothy this morning, and it was talking about make your progress evident.

You know, other people will see you grow in Christ and, of course, in knowledge of Christ. Here�s the topic, Westminster Confession. This could go bad quickly. Now I quote the Westminster Confession of Faith, the WCF, more often than our own Statement of Faith, the London Baptist Confession of 1689.

By the way, if you go to our website, bbcchurch .org, and pull up the Statement of Faith, it tells you why we use the 1689, and it says something like, �We�re in general agreement, and it was theological, it was pastoral, it was practical, etc., etc

But it was also pretty much taken from the Westminster Confession of Faith, so it�s almost like going back to primary documents. That�s why I like the Westminster Confession of Faith. In some areas, the Act of Obedience section is not as good, the Baptism section is not as good.

But I seem to quote that more. You ought to read that. You ought to get that app on your phone, the Reformed Confessions and Creeds, and you could read the shorter catechism, you could read the larger catechism, you could read all kinds of things.

But you ought to do that. I probably like the Heidelberg Catechism and Belgic Confession more than even the Westminster, but it doesn�t matter. So the paper here is Westminster Confession, and then it says Discussion of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

So I don�t know everything that�s in here, but I�m hoping it�s not too bad. So this is a test. This is live radio. I have read the Westminster Confession of Faith for my paper concerning a major post-Reformation confession.

I will briefly comment on its contents, accuracy, and its present-day value. So see, that�s just hey, this is what I�m going to do, here�s where I�m going to be. Off we go. Contents. All right, I wonder what I might say.

And by the way, this is when you have to type. This is pre-IBM 286 SX. I think that was my first computer. No, no, no. 386, not DX, but 386 SX. It was a PS1 IBM, and we had special kind of, I don�t know, floppy disks, something that I had to put in, because there was hardly any memory, put in every time I wanted to quote something.

And when I got the NAS, it was so amazing to be able to quote the NAS. That was fascinating. Contents. The contents of this confession run the whole gamut of awesome doctrines. Wow. And statements of the faith.

What am I? Who am I? I am you. The author of the Holy Scripture starts the discussion, sorry, the authority of the Holy Scripture starts the discussion, on a good note, stressing the absolute authority of God�s Word.

The Trinity and God�s eternal decrees keep the high level of lofty doctrines continuing. Maybe I won�t be finishing Colossians commentary. Man�s Fall, God�s covenant with man. Hey. Hey. I just was reading the, was it Brown-Keel? Sacred Bond book.

I�m rereading that, and I was reading the covenant of redemption section a couple days ago. Man, that is good. You ought to get that. That�s an excellent little book. Sacred Bond, covenant of redemption chapter.

Excellent. God�s covenant with man, effectual calling, adoption, sanctification, repentance, assurance, liberty, smile, and others round out this well-written summary of the reformed faith of the 17th century.

It�s well-written. Those Westminster divines, oh, supra-infra. When I was in London, I don�t know, a year ago, two years ago? And we went to Westminster. I wanted to get back there in that special room where these guys were hammering this out, but they had, they said no.

So then I went to the back and talked to the security guard. My sales background would not allow me to just take no for an answer, at least not the first no, right? Selling begins with the first no. Speaking of IBM computers, I have the IBM selling school background.

When I was in Los Angeles, got a job with Duracell. They flew me back to New York City. It was 1982 and I wanted to go see where John Lennon was shot outside the, what�s the name of that hotel? Dakota.

Thank you for that. And I wanted to see that and then I took a limo up to, I think Bethel, Connecticut or Danbury, Connecticut. And I was trained there. Well, they trained me with the IBM selling school and if I remember rightly, it was summarize the situation, state the idea, explain how it works, reinforce key benefits, close.

Now good thing I don't have to sell when it comes to the gospel. I want to be persuasive. I'd like to make cogent arguments. What's the word that people love to use now? Robust. I'd like to have a robust discussion.

If I read one more article on the Gospel Coalition website about robust, I don't know what to do. All right. Many other topics are discussed and the only obvious exclusion would be the negligence of eschatology.

Eschatology in the Reformed Confessions

Negligence of eschatology. Well, years ago, we had a pretty elaborate statement of faith for eschatology and we began to talk as elders and we thought, you know what? If you look at the Savoy, kind of a congregationalist deal, right?

Think John Owen. If you look at the Westminster Confession of Faith, Presbyterians. If you look at London Baptist Confession, Baptist. If you look at Belgic, if you look at Heidelberg, if you look at Dort, if you look at any of these great creeds or confessions, even if you want to go back farther, Nicene, Athanasius, Apostles, you don't see eschatology parsed like a lot of people parse it out today.

You do see a personal eschatology. That is, you have a body, obviously, and you're going to die and stand before God, right? Your body's going to be resurrected either unto life or unto eternal damnation.

You'll see that kind of talk. You'll see talk of the eschatology of the person of the Son, that as he ascended into heaven in bodily form, he too will come back and he will descend and he will return in the end times to judge the living and the dead, the quick and the dead.

You'll hear that. But beyond that, you're not going to see, oh, you know what? It's parsed out with post-millennialism. It's parsed out with pre-trib rapture. It's parsed out with all these other things.

And we asked the question as an elder board, what kind of wisdom is there for these eschatological statements in the Reformed Confessions and Creeds? Why do they do that? I think they're onto something.

And so then we switched to the London Baptist Confession and we had fewer parsed out things. So for instance, if somebody came to the church and they differed on the rapture, right? Somebody was pre-trib, somebody was mid-trib, somebody was post-trib, somebody was pro-trib.

Who would be pro-trib? What if somebody's a-trib? Whatever it might be, what do you do with that? I mean, are they allowed to be members? Well, I think that's a no-brainer. Are they allowed to be elders, deacons?

And the list goes on. Well, let's go back here. No Compromise Radio. My name's Mike Ebendroth. And this is historical theology stuff, but it's getting cold right here. I'm writing a paper on the Reformed Confession of Faith called the Westminster Confession.

Accuracy of the Westminster Confession and Baptism

Number two section, accuracy. I believe for the most part that Grace Community Church could sign on to the teachings found in the Westminster Confession. I have all kinds of comments. There are good comments.

I mean, it's true and everything else. And I was a member there and I love Grace. But I'm just thinking about what I must have been thinking at the time and how I would be measuring things up and prioritizing and catechizing and irrigating, consecrating.

Mighty doctrines such as justification, providence, and free will are just some of the few great Reformation decrees espoused in this Confession of 1643. As expected. Who did I think I was? One of the key areas in which we differ this confession is located in the section on baptism.

Okay. I still would disagree with the section on baptism, but okay. My problems with Infant Baptist, ready for this, aren't as great as they used to be. I'm not a Baptist, I'm not a Beto Baptist, but I don't think they're as loony as they used to be in my mind.

I write a little bit about the baptism section. I don't need to read it here. The other area that is obviously incorrect in this section is on the Lord's Supper. I don't know why it's so funny. It's 1230 here on a Saturday and here I'm in the studio by myself just laughing like Steve Cooley's here.

You tune in for this. The other area, okay, Lord's Supper. Their Reformed position would be far from this wingly position, it was wingly and I should have said, of symbolic resemblances. What does that mean?

Symbolic resemblances? Is that something from the Anabaptist nomenclature? Just the term sacrament gives their position away. I just was thinking the other day about the different sinks that they have in a Catholic church.

I've never seen them, but I've read about them and I don't know if they still do them or not, but you've got the sink that everything goes down into like you'd have in your normal kitchen and goes into the septic and the sewer, et cetera, et cetera.

And then you've got the one that you pour the consecrated wine down and it just goes onto the earth because you don't want to pour Jesus's blood down into the septic thing. You have to pour it down in this, it's called something, I don't know what it is, probably a Latin word.

Do you guess? You think? You think? You think? You think? And I thought, well, I guess I understand, but once you start adding all these laws, they just become all messed up because what's the difference between me taking consecrated wine that's supposedly turned into the blood of Jesus, even though the other miracle is now it doesn't look like it, it still looks like wine, tastes like wine, and you pour it down the sink and it goes in the sewer and now it mixes up with other things.

What's the difference if I do that or if I take the wine that's consecrated, that's Jesus's blood that doesn't look like blood, doesn't taste like blood, but is blood, and I drink it, then sooner or later it goes where?

So I don't know what the big deal is either way. Some type of Christ presence exists with this confession. In other words, what I'm trying to say is there's transubstantiation, there's consubstantiation, there's a spiritual presence, i .e. reformed Calvin, and then there's this wiggling position of reminder, resemblances.

The authors state, Westminster Confession, Were the receivers outwardly partaking of the visible elements, do then inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified.

One more note, and I say some more things about it. One more note of interest would be under the section of the church. The writers state, The Pope of Rome in any sense behead thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and that son of perdition that exalted himself in the church against Christ and all that is called God.

Then I write, by the way, just a note here, this is my pastoral point for the day. If you read a book by someone that you like and they said something that's different, maybe not as clear, maybe not as orthodox even, maybe not as precise, you ought to ask yourself this question, when did that person write it?

And if the person's alive and they wrote something in 1993, I hope they are more biblical, more defined, refined. Now, if you read the book that I wrote in 2007, or the book I wrote in 2009, or the other books that I wrote, I think you probably hear or feel something different compared to what I'm saying now.

I hope I'm growing in the faith and maturing in the faith and understanding doctrine better, and therefore, even back to the whole MacArthur thing, he denies the blood, what do you mean by that? Eternal sonship.

Yeah, John used to deny eternal sonship, and then he said, I was wrong, and then he made the corrections. And so you think, oh, well, when did he do that, right? When did J .I. Packer write? This is the old Packer or new Packer?

New evangelicals and Catholics together, Packer, or the Packer that wrote the introduction for the, I think, Banner book, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ by John Owen, right? That introductory statement in that book is worth a book.

Here's what I said regarding the Pope Antichrist. This is a heavy statement, but it probably reveals more truth about the Roman Catholic Church than most evangelicals would acknowledge today. They were calling it like they saw it.

For that, I applaud them. I'm applauding the Westminster Confession of Faith. Yes, Connor was on there. What John did, what MacArthur did, in terms of eternal sonship, he's asking, he used Psalm 2, you are my son, today I begotten you.

And so he used that as a temporal thing, that he wasn't son, although he was second person of the Trinity and always divine, always existent, and so he would say the right things in terms of categories, but then use this temporal word, today I begotten you, today I begotten thee.

And so he said he was always divine, he was always second person of the Trinity, but not always a son. And people came to him and said, that's not the orthodox position, here are the errors, here's this, there's that, and then you'll see the updated version of John in the future.

And so I commend him for that. I mean, think about what we've taught and what we believed and who we are and everything else, and I appreciated that. So anyway, they would say I was wrong. For that, I applaud them.

For that, I applaud you, Connor, good job. Present day value. I feel that there is a tremendous amount of information in this confession of faith that is directly applicable today. Like God, sin, death, hell, God, justice, justification, law, gospel.

Not considering the, I can't, I can't read it. I can't read that next section, Scott Clark would kill me. And then I got, I got something on there that said good, written good. So anyway, here's the thing.

We all need to learn and grow. Second Peter chapter three, we want to grow in the knowledge and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, don't we? And I think R .C. Sproul's right when he said 80 of your theology is as good as it gets.

You've got 20 error, you just don't know where that is, because if you knew where the error was, you'd change it, right? Any thinking Christian would do that. So I'm glad you got watched today. Those Facebook watchers, I'm glad you listened.

If you're listening to No Compromise Radio, you can write me, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. We'll see you soon. 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 6. 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.