Run from RAAN

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. What are we doing here? I need to turn this volume up and turn this theological acumen button up.

There we go. Engage. I have not seen the new Star Trek TV show because you have to have some special CBS code.

I wasn�t going to sign up for it. I thought it was probably going to be dumb anyway. Might as well live in the old days, no compromise

Star Trek days with Gorns and such.

I just was looking at my Twitter account, which is at NoCoRadio. And on the

RAAN network, RAAnetwork .org, it�s got an article there, and it is, �Where are all the black evangelicals?

The rise of woke evangelicalism. The water fountains and signs may have been taken down, but our country�s sordid past still required addressing�

I think they mean �still requires systemic issues that disproportionately impacted black communities� by John Richards, October 10, 2017.

A Pew Research religious landscape survey found only 6 % of the black Protestant Christians also identified as evangelicals.

On the other hand, 76 % of white Protestant identified as evangelicals.

That might make some people feel some kind of way. I don�t feel any particular way as I look at that.

I have to look at who Pew is talking to, etc., what�s an evangelical.

But my friend Ed Setzer says, �Facts and stats don�t care about your feelings.� This leads to the obvious question, where are all the black evangelicals?

Are we moving in a direction where �black evangelical� is an oxymoronic as the phrase �true myth ?�

Okay, he goes on to quote a little bit later here, �Dr.

Anthea Butler, a fellow Fuller Seminary graduate�

I can�t talk today, I�m sorry for that. For those of you that listen to this and then disagree with me, you can say that, �Dude can�t even talk.�

I�m white, by the way. Like that means anything? What does that mean? It means nothing.

In her talk, she gave at Fuller, she notes, �The history of American evangelicalism suffers from the problem of whiteness.�

Okay, what�s the problem of whiteness? You know, Lecrae the other day about white evangelicalism and he�s leaving white evangelicalism.

You see where this is all going? It�s like when you put �social� in front of the Gospel and some modifier besides the

Gospel of Grace and some of the biblical modifiers, you�re in trouble. And once you start saying �I mean,

I understand evangelicalism is a very fluid term and there are feministic evangelicals and there are liberal evangelicals and there are

Catholic evangelicals, I understand that, but once it�s the white -black thing, white and black evangelicals � �The battle for many ,� this person writes, �black evangelicals has always been the fight against assimilation, losing one�s culture for the sake of Gospel unity.

The problem for many blacks, white evangelicals are never asked to assimilate.

Their culture is seen as default out of an act or out of a box factory setting that defines what it means to be

Christian. Many believe the Bebbington quadrilateral best defines what it means to be evangelical.

Okay, these are the four things. Biblicism, high regard and obedience to the Bible as authority.

If you mean by �biblicism ,� solo scriptura, not solo scriptura, you can count me out.

Crucicentrism, focus on Jesus� crucifixion. Conversionism, well, that�s a different definition than I would give, but their definition is a belief that humans need to be converted.

And activism, the expression and demonstration of the Gospel in missionary and social reform efforts, they tie those together.

Many believe that this quadrilateral best defines what it means to be an evangelical. Sorry, pal.

Sorry, palette. I don�t know who these people are, who wrote that.

It doesn�t matter to me. Are they white? Are they black? See, this is just ridiculous. Here�s what matters to me.

Jew or Gentile, let�s use some biblical categories instead of white and black. Jew and Gentile, my guess is most white people that I know and most black people that I know are

Gentiles. That�s their background, is Gentile. Maybe there�s some white people you know that are Jewish, for the sake of argument, but for me, for my experience, for my anecdotal, anhock information, this is not evangelicalism.

Evangelicalism focuses on the evangel, the good news, that Jesus Christ, it�s interesting that 1

Timothy chapter 2 says when there�s one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, he didn�t say the

Jew Christ Jesus, he doesn�t say the black, white man, right?

There�s one race. Friends, as I�ve said many times before, when you start thinking white, black, you are not thinking biblically.

You are thinking along the lines of first Adam, last

Adam, then you�re thinking biblically. That would be correct. If you want to look at two men in history, you shouldn�t think white and black.

I don�t know what color Adam was, but my guess is Jesus looked pretty Jewish, pretty much like his mother.

I don�t think he looked like Joseph at all, and you know what I mean, because Joseph was the stepdad.

Here�s how you think about people. In Adam, in Christ. In Adam, in the last Adam. I don�t think of people when

I look at them. Oh, less than an image -bearer because more melatonin, more pigment, less pigment.

Is melatonin, is that what I�m after? I really sound smart, don�t I? I�ve got the

Bible stuff down, that in Christ everyone�s equal, and where�s all this white -black stuff going to lead?

I�ll tell you where it�s going to lead. It�s going to lead with a lot of blacks leaving evangelicalism because A, they�ve had a bad experience,

B, they don�t even define evangelicalism properly, C, if there�s been any evangelical who is white that has done something or said something that�s racist or wrong or prejudiced or perceived as, they�ve got to go now strictly to a black community and their worship services and their culture and their desire not to be assimilated, they�re going to create their own little subculture, and what�s that going to yield?

I�ll tell you what it�s going to yield. It�s just a prediction of mine. This is just in my opinion kind of show. It�s going to yield a black

Bible translation. I don�t know if that means you have to have both parents black to be black,

I don�t know if that means if your dad�s black then you are black, I don�t know if that self -identify is black,

I don�t know if it�s like that lady who�s white that wants to be black, I don�t know if it�s someone who is black like Michael Jackson but did a lot of bleaching type of things on his face to look less black,

I don�t know what that looks like, but believe me, they�ll sort those details out and there will be some black

Bible translation because isn�t there someone on the Bible translation back in King James� time, back in the

Geneva Bible, back in the Breaches Bible I think is called the, it is the

Geneva Bible. This is where it�s going to go and there�s going to be this, well we don�t want to be assimilated into any culture so we have to have our own little rod dryer type of things but it�ll just be the enclave of black.

I know what you�re saying, you�re saying man you�re white so you can say all these things. You�re going to go and find every particular person who doesn�t perfectly live the

Christian life and who said something in the past or lived in the South and maybe it�s

Dabney the theologian or Thornwell the theologian, Southern Presbyterians who lived in a culture and said things, then nothing they say is good and maybe you�re going to find that, and I�m not a big

Edwards fan, but you find Edwards had a slave and it is this overreaction and I�m done with white evangelicalism.

Well if I think of the Reformation and I think alright, all those guys were white

Calvin is white, Luther is white, Zwingli is white,

John Knox, he�s white, and since they�re all white I don�t want to have anything to do with it.

You know I don�t know what color Augustine was, but my guesses are

Athanasius and Augustine and people who lived in Africa might not have been white.

And you can see the seedbed of the Reformation in Augustine and the recovery of much of what was there.

You know, Jerome, he was white, I guess he was, I don�t know if he is or not, and therefore, you know, what about the

Vulgate? Let�s see what else this article has. This is the first time I�m reading it. Many Christians who consider themselves evangelicals would render a hearty amen to each one of those identifying markers.

Here�s the rub. Evangelicals have diverse opinions on how those identifying qualities are lived out.

Social reform? If evangelicalism to you means social reform, you don�t understand the

Bible and what it teaches about evangelicalism and the gospel. It�s called liberalism.

What�s the church�s mandate? Social reform? See how they tie it together?

Missionary and social reform. You ought to read that article that Joel James and Brian Beterbach did,

I think it was in the Master Seminary Journal, about social reform in Africa to white missionaries in Africa.

Isn�t that awful? Shouldn�t we only send blacks there? See how ridiculous this is? This is insane.

It is insane. Maybe it�s just because it�s something that I don�t struggle with.

Maybe it�s a particular thing that other people do struggle with. Maybe it�s just that I live out here in the middle of nowheresville in a town of 6 ,000 people.

Maybe it�s the people that I see here at church, the Puerto Ricans and the Brazilians and the whites and the

Indians and the blacks. You know what I see them all as? Sinners who are justified.

People that want to talk about Jesus and learn from Jesus, the Jewish man. And if someone is white and they�ve written a good book, are black and they�ve written a good book, does anybody care?

Nobody that I know cares. Not one person. This one says, this article says, why?

Because white Christians, okay, right there. White Christians, black Christians. It�s over.

Friends, when it�s black evangelicalism and white evangelicalism, it�s over. Turn the page. Woke is the new evangelicalism.

This is awful. I submit to you that this has the elements of what they don�t want, but they�re using because it�s good for their,

I was going to say propaganda, because that�s what I really think about that type of issue.

National Association of Evangelicals, Shaping Evangelicalism, the

National Black Evangelical Association, and what that is. Mark Knoll is quoted here, �Black

Christians are the one who have experienced the cross most traumatically in American history, yet have not been included in the stories of evangelicalism.�

I have no idea what that means. I�ve had Mark Knoll on this show, and he�s twice as smart as I am.

They�ve experienced the cross most traumatically. So, from what

I can gather is, the cross is something you have to pick, it�s like the burden you have to bear, you�ve got a contentious wife, or you have, and I�m not putting it on the same category.

Selling people like chattel is heinous. But the cross is slavery?

That�s not the cross. That�s an atrocity. That�s a sin. 1 Timothy 1 talks about it�s a sin to kidnap people.

But that�s not a cross. Historically, the article goes on, �Black churches thrive, survive, and have been inscribed in American history.

This history includes a conversionistic heritage, little told in white evangelicalism.�

For example, AMU founder Richard Allen was as much a circuit rider as John Wesley, yet Allen and other black evangelical forerunners are largely ignored in most evangelical narratives and models.

Well, do you know why I ignore Methodist circuit riders? It�s because I think

Methodism is faulty. I don�t promote John Wesley either. It has nothing to do with white or black or anything else.

What�s it say here? An activism tethered to the gospel? That�s wrong.

If you mean you get saved and you personally want to go help people socially, great, but it�s not the church�s mandate.

There�s no mandate to go do that. An activism tethered to the gospel needs black voices to make it authentic, and not black voices who assimilate to white evangelical ideas of activism.

So for me, to have any kind of authentic ministry, I think we should probably count up all the people we�ve had on No Compromise Radio, and I don�t know how authentic it is.

If I�ve had black people on, maybe they�re the ones who have assimilated into this culture here in West Boylston, Massachusetts, where I am the pastor.

We have a white pastor, we have a white associate pastor, we have a darker -colored Greek pastor, we have an

Indian pastor, and we have another white pastor. He�s really white. He�s white, white.

We need black voices to make it authentic? No, no, no, no. The Bible is authentic, sola scriptura, and the work of God building

His church is authentic. And if we�re in Antarctica, our Greenland, as I�ve talked about before, our

Norway, and there are just white people there, or I�ve been in Zimbabwe before, and everybody there, with a few exceptions,

I saw a couple white people on the street. When I was the only black, I was the only white person in the church,

I don�t know if they were very authentic because they were so black, they didn�t have some white evangelicalism and some influence there from the whites, and if I was there,

I would try to assimilate into the black culture or not try to assimilate. All these issues.

I�d be thinking, you know what? This is awesome. There are other Christians here. I feel at a home.

I�ve been literally around the world, and whatever church I�ve been at, if I�m the only white person with a bunch of Indians, or the only white person with a bunch of Zimbabweans, or the only white person with a bunch of,

I don�t know where else have I been when it�s been like that. I was thinking, wow, we�re singing �Great is Thy Faithfulness ,� because the focus is not on us, it�s externas, it�s on Jesus, it�s outside of us.

Once you begin to talk white, black, true evangelicalism with these distorted categories, and you begin to see the world not through the lens of Scripture, not through the lens of the gospel and Jesus Christ, but through the lens of white police and black people getting killed by the police and other factors, it�s over.

You know, Black Lives Matter and all these other things, and what about racial injustice, and what about incarceration, and what about all these things?

One atom, the first, the last atom, two atoms, that�s how you have to think about these things.

Is there injustice in this world? Yes. Are blacks treated unjustly?

Yes. Right? You just look at the cases and you think, okay, how many does it take, and this, that, or the other?

Are whites treated unjustly? Is this a culture that�s mainly white and blacks have to assimilate? All these other things go haywire once you begin to say white evangelicalism, black evangelicalism.

If you want to keep it outside of the church doors, as it were, and talk about what kind of incarcerations and what kind of, you know, if you get pulled over,

Mike, you�ve never been a black man, pulled over by the police, and I know, I know,

I know, I know. Let�s just grant you all those things. What I�m trying to tell you is once it�s white, black evangelicalism, it�s over.

You�re not thinking biblically. You�re not thinking Galatians 3 .28. You�re not thinking Jew -Gentile.

You�re not saying, �Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of white evangelicals.� It�s just as awful as it gets.

Right? And so you look at woke evangelicalism defined by five characteristics in this RAAN network article.

Number one, they possess an embodied theology, true incarnational gospel proclamation.

I have no idea what that means. Like I said before, I�ve been to several seminaries and teach at several,

I don�t know what they�re talking about, incarnational gospel proclamation. It�s not, the gospel is to be declared.

You don�t live it. It�s not incarnational. If you, it�s a small I here, if you want to talk about the incarnation, great.

Incarnational proclamation means what? You preach the gospel? Well, that�s what it means, but that�s not what they mean.

They are actively involved in culture -making and shaping, individually, to kingdoms, as a

Church mandate. They live in orthodoxy tension. Oh, that�s interesting. Orthodoxy to most was shaped by white evangelicals.

So let�s just say, you know, active imputation, active obedience, justification, some of the things that some of the

Reformers and Puritans really, you know, saw in Scripture that Rome, talk about white evangelicals, and woke, how about Rome?

Then we can�t believe any of these things, because you know what? White theologians, they were disconnected from minorities and their experiences, so how could they work through those issues properly?

Number four, they have a willingness to disrupt harmful theological constructs. Like what?

What�s the harmful theological construct? If it�s in the Bible, and a white man or a black man says, �This is what the

Bible teaches.� Tell me how that�s harmful. Now I have to begin to teach and preach two different messages.

One of the greatest things about preaching the transchronological, transracial truth of the Bible that has two

Adams in mind is that I can preach the same message here, and I can preach the same message in Zimbabwe, and I can preach the same message in Greenland, Antarctica, wherever I go, because we are of one race, and when they begin to switch it, white evangelicalism, black evangelicalism, you can pretty much say it�s over, and the next step is theological liberalism, because that�s the exact same strategy that the liberals have.

They possess a willingness to critique and learn from failures of the champions of the faith, the future.

I�m excited about the future of black evangelicalism. It�s over. It�s over.

White, black, one Adam, two Adam. Here�s the final question in the article.

How uncomfortable are white evangelicals willing to get for the sake of effective gospel witness? Well, when did you stop beating your wife?

I don�t know if I�ve read anything as frustrating as I�ve read here. The only question remains, how uncomfortable are white evangelicals willing to get for the sake of effective gospel witness?

Well, I�ll tell you what. Here�s how uncomfortable I�m not willing to get. I�m not willing to think white evangelical, black evangelical when there�s the first Adam and the last

Adam, and the message is the same. See 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 3 and 4.

And I�m not willing to put social racial constructs into this woke theology to say, you know what?

Here�s the template, and since you�re white, you can�t tell me, you can�t understand, you don�t get it.

This is liberalism, okay? If you�re a black person and you�re of color and you say there�s been injustices and you�ve got a lot of problems with authority and police and this, that, or the other, friend, don�t let that taint the way you see,

A, Jesus, B, the Bible, and C, those who are in Christ. You won�t be thinking properly.

Don�t let that affect you. Well, this is what happened to my ancestors in Georgia, and here�s why

I can�t assimilate into white theology and white evangelicalism and white unwokeness, and white, white, white.

How uncomfortable am I willing to get for effective gospel witness? So if I�m not uncomfortable and I�m just preaching the

Bible to anybody that will show up and treat them with love and respect and camaraderie as we worship

Jesus, the Jew, man, last Adam together, then it�s not effective gospel witness.

I reject that. This is a lie, it�s not true. It�s liberalism, it�s socialism, and it�s a blending of the gospel.

Once you put some word in front of evangelical, it�s over. Feminist evangelicalism, homosexual evangelicalism,

Roman Catholic evangelicalism, white evangelicalism, black evangelicalism. And so pretty soon you�re going to see commentaries only written by blacks,

Bible translations only translated by blacks. That�s where we�re going. You watch it. And if they�re black and they�re at Fuller Seminary, or they�re nice to blacks and they say things like this, it doesn�t matter if they�re liberal, we�re willing to stretch our orthodoxy for the sake of whiteness and blackness.

No. This is bad. You need to run from this. Run from it. 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.

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.

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