Evangelical Beliefs

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. Mike Abendroth here. Before I get to our special guest today, our weekly guest. I was going to say, who�s our special guest?

There must be somebody else. Oh, we�re two or three or more gathered together in his name.

Well, speaking of which, then we�re launching the Equipping Eve show. So people need to make sure they go to equippingeve .org or do notbesurprised .com with Aaron Benziger for Equipping Eve, the Mork and Mindy spinoff of No Compromise Radio.

Does the accent go on the Z, Benzinger? I think it does, actually.

Zinger, Benzinger. I think it�s kind of like my last name, nobody can really pronounce her last name. So it�s just, I think her signature when she used to write articles was Aaron Benz. It�s just like a short thing.

E. Benz, that�s what I go with, yeah. But you know what, people have a hard time pronouncing my last name, too. Yeah, they want to call me Collie, you know. Mellon. Yeah.

Yeah. My Mellon Collie. So I often ask you, Steve, what�s new with you? Anything new in your life? You know, what�s the latest? How�s your health? Well, it�s Christmas time. What�s new in my life? Two inches of snow tonight here in New England, supposedly.

Yeah.

Yeah. Anything new? Well, you know, the main thing that�s new, we did have a little excitement last week. You know, I posted on Facebook, but we had both the front door and the back door of our house were gone.

So, you know, it was just like, what would it be like to live out in the wilderness and actually have a home? And that was pretty much it. You know, the squirrels were running in and out and, well, okay, that part�s not true.

But it was quite breezy.

Trinity, Incarnation, and the Equality of the Son

Yeah. Yeah. There was once a squirrel. It was a flying squirrel, Steve, and it was stuck in the auditorium, the sanctuary, if you will, at Bethlehem Bible Church. And we were trying to get it out. And the secretary at the time was Lenita, and Lenita�s in a wheelchair.

And so she was down the hall trying to block it, so it ran out of the front door. And so it was Lenita and myself, and we were trying to get that squirrel out. I think I saw some foam by its mouth. Was it rabid?

So, is there any other announcement we need to make, something we need to tell the folks? It�s that time of year again, giving�s low, needs are high. Is that it? 1 -800-GIVE-TO-STEVE.

No. Yeah, I think everything�s fine. And, you know, went so far as I know, none of my daughters are pregnant, so.

Okay. Well, you have a lot of grandkids, right? Yes, I do. Five and� Fifteen or something. Five and counting. Oh, I was, you know what? For a second, I thought I was in math class, and it was five factorial.

You know what was fun? It was, I took three of them out on, let�s see, it was for Harvest Festival in our neighborhood.

Oh, see, Steve used to be very biblical, and then now he�s licentious.

And then they�re all dressed up as, from Frozen, what�s her name, Elsa. And so we�d go up to the three doors, and they�d go, �Are you all sisters Now they�re a year apart each, you know, and they�re cousins, but it was, it was pretty funny.

And, you know, listen to all the ladies just squeal, you know, as they�d come up, and, you know, tell their husbands they had to come in, and look at these three little girls.

Now, Steve, I think we�ve probably just lost maybe 20 of the radio listening audience. I doubt it. It�s because, you know, they want you to say that Halloween is of the devil, but I guess if Kirk Cameron can say Christmas is like in the Bible.

Well, I didn�t.

It wasn�t really Halloween. It was, you know, our neighborhood is too Puritan to do that, so. Oh, okay. See, it makes sense.

New England, right? 1750s. Steve, in the latest Christianity Today, November 2014, page 16, I did like this article, and I thought it�d be a good jumping off point for us today on No Compromise Radio, because people want to know what Tuesday Guy thinks.

At Tuesday Guy. I doubt that. At the Tuesday Guy, evangelicals� favorite heresies. Now, I thought, you know, this is a props to Christianity Today. Heretics are alive and well, Lifeway Research and Ligonier Ministries, that kind of gives Lifeway some credibility.

Some street cred. Yeah, bolsters them a lot. Found after measuring the theological awareness of more than 550 self-identified American evangelicals. The good news. More than 9 in 10 believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

And that.

Can I just interrupt there? If you're a self-identified evangelical and you're listening to us right now, and you're not sure if Jesus rose from the dead, I have a newsflash for you. You are not a Christian.

You may be a self-identified evangelical, but you are not a Christian. Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a free world.

So you can call yourself, I guess, whatever you want. You can call yourself a cardboard box. I mean, it doesn't really matter, right? Steve, quit putting people in a box. Quit putting them in a rhombus.

We were doing that in Twitter world for a while, thinking of weird shapes and say, stop putting God in a rhombus. Stop putting him in a sphere. Yeah, we didn't. We didn't get too many forwards on that or favorites, rather.

Stop putting God in a cylinder. Isosceles triangles, you know, I hate those things. So anyway, this favorite heresies, little gleanings, it's called in Christianity today, nine in 10 believe Jesus rose from the dead and that heaven and hell are real, but many either agree with unorthodox teachings on the Trinity salvation and other doctrines or are uncertain about their soundness.

So let's just go through this list a little bit as we see fit. And it's got agree, don't know, and disagree. Those are three kind of nice categories, aren't they? I don't know. I'm sorry to burst in the scene here with the smokers cough, but it just struck me as quite funny.

Sometimes when Steve and I are just hanging out, pastoral ministries, taking care of issues, doing things together. We went to the hospital together yesterday, for instance, and then Steve will say something that's funny.

And here's the bad news. Well, the good news is it was funny. The bad news is we could have saved that for the radio show.

Well, the really bad news is, and I almost sort of didn't want to kind of go see this person in the hospital, mostly because I knew that if I made him laugh, it would be very painful because he just had his jaw broken and, you know, it was a surgery.

But we, so we went and saw him and I'm just like, I just, I don't want to be funny. Don't be funny. But it's, it's, it's hard. You know what?

Yeah, it's, it's, uh, this time of year again, where you try to do things inside. And I said to Kim, my wife, you know, let's, let's have another talent show at the church because we did that a couple of years ago and it's kind of fun and the kids can do things and, and it's just a good time just laughing.

But I said, Steve has to be the MC because I think if there's a spiritual gift of, of emceeing a talent show at a church out in the middle of nowhere, you've got that. Wow.

That's, that's quite a gift you have there, Steve.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit Are Equally Divine

So let's go through a few of these. God, the Father is more divine than Jesus. That's the first thing. And they, they give some notations underneath Council of Nicaea, First Council of Constantinople, Council of Orange.

And so they're basing this on some ancient creeds, the creedal imperative, of course.

Well, you know, the creeds are all correct and, and scripture, I mean, we could justify it by, you know, introducing you to the Granville Sharp rule. That's good radio.

Well, you know what, see, that's pretty nice. So it says God, the Father is more divine than Jesus. And 31%, if I read this correctly, it's kind of hard for me to read this, but agree. There's a large portion of people who say they're Christians that agree that the Father is more divine than Jesus.

Now here's my simple no-coat question. If someone's divine, then is there degrees of divinity? He's 110 divine.

I mean, I don't quite get that. Well, it's like, you know, I mean, it's like a coach in sports, you know, give me everything you've got, coach. I'm giving you 110%. Well, then I need 150%. Okay. But really, okay.

There's nothing more than 100%. God, the Father is fully divine. Jesus, the Son is fully divine. The Holy Spirit is fully divine. You know, they all share the same attributes, the same essence. You can't, you can't say that one is more, you know, now do they function differently?

Yes. But they're all the same. You know, you can't say that, oh, the Father is more holy or the Son is more loving or the Spirit is more comforting. You can't say any of those kind of things because they're all the same.

But the idea that, you know, what this really reveals to me not only is biblical illiteracy and theological illiteracy, which I think was the point of this survey, but it also says to me something about the way people view the Trinity, that they really think there is not just a hierarchy of function, but a hierarchy of divinity, you know?

And I imagine for a lot of these people, it'd be like, okay, the Father is the most holy or the most divine, the Son is the second divine, and the Spirit is the third divine.

And then there are, of course, the Westminster divines. Well, when you even think of simple statements in the Bible, grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, you know, we just read those quickly and kind of gloss over them.

But you think, okay, grace comes from the Father. And how can grace come from the Son if the Son isn't God? I mean, how can you receive peace from God and peace with God if it's from Jesus who's less than God?

And so, it's sad to say that when we think of the Incarnation, we default to Jesus is less divine versus the biblical view, the Philippians 2 view, where Jesus assumes a full nature of humanity, and that doesn't make him less than God.

That just shows his love as God that he would stoop so low and take on human flesh.

Pete. And I was thinking about Philippians 2 because it says he didn't regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. Well, if he didn't have equality with God, he couldn't grasp it. So that's exactly the point.

Jesus is equal to the Father. There's no, there's no kind of 199, you know, God the Father 100, Jesus 99, close, but not quite.

Pete. Well, this is a good time to interject the thought that just because you are submitting, it doesn't mean you're inferior. And so, that goes for workers and bosses, that goes for wives and husbands, that goes for children and parents, and that goes for the Trinity as well.

Paul is Pete It goes for associate pastors and senior pastors. Pete It surely does.

Yes, but I've already given you the title, Pastor of Vision. So that's from here on out. First Corinthians chapter 11, I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

So the head of the Messiah is the Father, and we would realize that they're equal in essence and nature, and yet submission does not mean inferiority. So no compromise radio. Number two, Jesus is the first creature created by God, 27 agree.

Now, Elder Steve, ex-Elder Mormon Steve, what's your view of that?

Pete. Yeah, that is a bad heresy. I mean, if you believe that, you've got a real problem. If Jesus is, well, here's the kind of the trick, I don't know how many Mormons they talk to who self-identify themselves as evangelicals, because if you believe that, you could be a Mormon.

So check yourself, check your membership. Pete I think there's a couple movies coming out. Mormon movies are real popular.

Pete Are they? Pete Yeah. Pete Okay. But I mean, that is the, you know, the Aryan kind of view that Jesus is the first creature, that he's not the creator. You know, the Father didn't create through Jesus, or the Mormons would even say that, but that Jesus didn't exist before God the Father created him, and that would be wrong.

That would be a heresy. Pete Steve, I'd hate to mix metaphors with radio shows and TV and stuff like that. Pete Go ahead. Pete Yeah. But it's our show, right? Yeah. So you think of The Apprentice, whether it's Donald Trump or the BBC UK version, what's the guy's name?

Sir Sugar? Lord Sugar? Pete I would have absolutely no idea. Pete Uh-huh. The billionaire guy from London. They call him Lord Sugar because he's a lord now. Pete Sugar Sugar? Pete Oh, sugar. And so they stick out their fingers and they say, you're fired.

And so we could fire people for this, right? So if you say 27 of the people think that Jesus is this created being of a lesser order than God, then we could just say, you're fired. Pete Can we have news?

We have news for you. You are not a biblical Christian. Pete. That's right.

The Holy Spirit as a Person, Not a Force

Okay. The Holy Spirit, number three, is a force, not a personal being. 58 that we're up in that category, we're in that we're in that we don't know range. 58 agree. And then there's a bunch that don't know.

This is weird. I can't quite read this correctly. It's not well done, isn't it? But a lot of people believe that he's a force. Why is it wrong to believe that Jesus is. I mean, the Holy Spirit is a force.

Step number one, stop watching TBN. That's the cause. Well, it very well might be because if you've watched Benny Hinn and others throw the Holy Spirit around like he's a football, you know, then Pete.

We've got the Spirit.

Yes, we do. We've got the Spirit. How much force are you?

Pete Let's talk to our writers about that after the show.

Pete. We need writers. What about. What about the Holy Spirit being God himself?

Pete. And you know, what about him being offended? What about, you know, all these kind of personal attributes that are given to attributes of personality, let's say, that are given to him and or ascribed to him in Scripture?

Go ahead.

Peter. Well, I was just thinking about Acts chapter five, about the Holy Spirit and he being God and like you said, he, you know, do not quench the Spirit for Thessalonians five and offending the Spirit.

How can you I don't know the last time you offended electricity, Steve's coughing, I should probably push the cough button somehow. How do I do that?

Pete. That would be right behind the engineer over there.

Peter Oh, yeah, of course. Well, I see the theological acumen button next to Steve's. Pete Give that a boost, will you? Peter Yeah. But now I did find the mute button. So the next time.

Yeah, you were pretty sick for a while, weren't you? Pete Well, yeah, sick enough, sick enough to where I couldn't, I couldn't teach Sunday school. That was pretty bad.

Salvation by Grace Alone, Not Human Effort

Peter. All right, let's go to the next one. The Holy Spirit is less divine than God, the Father and Jesus. 18 of the people. So that's basically one in five of the evangelical surveyed would say that the Holy Spirit is less divine than God, the Father and Jesus.

Now, in john 16, that would have been very comforting for the disciples when Jesus says I'm going to leave, but I'm going to send you another one like me, who's less divine can help you less right now.

Here we go. I'm going to push the mute button. Okay, go cough away. Now you can hear me kind of hear Steve through there and I just turn it on again. All right, let's see people first seek God. This is going to be a fun one.

People according to the Christianity Today, November 2014, in their report of Lifeway slash Ligonier, they're talking to 550 folks, people first seek God, then he responds with grace 71%.

Pete. Let's see, there is no one who seeks Romans three. So, so no one would mean someone. Well, that's kind of like nothing.

No thing means something, or john six.

No one can means some can some can. Yes.

Those would be the maybe Southern Baptist in Memphis or something.

There's a few that can know so only those who respond to the altar call can.

Are you trying to tell me now Steve, if you were ever my Bible says sent to a church and they said, Now we want you to do an altar call at the end, what would you say?

I would say, well, I'd be happy to do that. Let's just go through all the verses that talk about altar calls in the Bible. Go ahead. You guys, you guys go first.

And then we'll go from there. Now, Steve, sometimes I think you're a lot nicer than I am. Other times I'm not so sure. So when we talked about this less than theoretical possibility yesterday, I said something to the effect to answer the question, well, you know, thanks for asking me to do that.

I'll call people to salvation and call people to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's for certain. And, you know, if you don't think that's adequate, then you could probably come up and follow up and do whatever you'd like.

After all, it's, you know, it's not, I'm not an officer here. Now, that was my response.

I thought that was quite nice. Well, the scenario presented yesterday was just a little bit different because you said, you know, they came to you five minutes before the meeting and said, Hey, by the way, we need you to do an altar call.

And here's my response, you know, because the idea was, well, wow, you know, now you only have five minutes to kind of respond to that. How do you respond? And my answer would have been, well, or my thinking was, well, they only have five minutes to find another preacher.

So I just say, I'd say, well, you know, I wish we had talked about that ahead of time. But I wonder how you'd, well, how did I phrase it yesterday? I think, you know, basically, it was just kind of like, you know, I won't be able to do that.

So if you'd like to find somebody else to preach, I certainly would understand that. Yeah. See? So that's kind of nice. You're still nice. Because I don't want to, I don't want to leave you guys in the lurch.

You know, if the most important thing is, this is what I want to say, if the most important thing is an altar call, then you've got a real problem, you know.

Steve, I did follow the tweet of Paige Patterson, the president of Southwestern the other day. And he said David Platt came and preached, and one person got saved and 30 some affirmed their desire to go on missions.

And so I'm wondering, hopefully, that Muslim got saved, who's attending the PhD program there at Southwestern.

Well, you know, I just kind of, if, if this would have happened, if they would have done an altar call while I was in seminary, first of all, I think all the profs would have stormed the stage. But secondly, if somebody would have come forward and said, I want to be saved, well, that man should be escorted out of seminary.

Well, he should be out, we should be happy that he's saved. Yes. We should be then helping him learn and grow because this is not a place for brand new Christians.

That's exactly right. We'll see you in a few years after you've matured a little bit.

So let's put all these things together in our doctrine of no co-concurrence. What if somebody was doing an altar call and the Holy Spirit came upon them like a force and.

I don't even know where we're going with that.

People, do they seek God first? No. What would it mean in Romans three when no one seeks God?

It would mean someone seeking after God, and then he responds. But the truth is, there's only one seeker in the Bible. And you can quote as many verses as you'd like, I'm going to respond with this. There's only one seeker in the Bible, and that is God.

Steve, I think along with you, that when people struggle with this idea that God has to cause salvation and we respond, or God's the initiator, God's the alpha, God's the captain, he's the author, that they are misunderstanding depravity when they work through it.

So if you get depravity down, you understand inability, then you realize God has to rescue, he has to save.

Well, because no spiritually dead person seeks after God, and that's consistent. That's Ephesians two, that's Romans three, that's John six, it's throughout the New Testament that no dead person apart from the work of God comes to him.

I mean, this is First Peter chapter one. I mean, this is the consistent testimony of scripture that God causes new life. We don't cause it.

We don't ask for it. God does it. I like Colossians chapter two and Ephesians two, that he makes us alive. He's the one that regenerates. All right, let's do a couple more. People must contribute their own effort for personal salvation, 56%.

And so when we talk about salvation, we're not talking about sanctification and growth. We're talking about your own personal salvation, that is justification or regeneration or something like that. We're not talking about conversion.

We're talking about God saving people. They must contribute their own effort. And so I think probably John chapter one, verses 12 and 13, not according to their blood, not according to their will, not according to the man who runs, to use Romans nine language, but it's God, it's God's will.

Pete. Yeah, he gives them the right, but that's based on his sovereign pleasure and nothing else. So people must contribute their own effort for personal salvation. Again, this reminds me of nothing more than Mormonism.

You know, grace is God picking up the slack after all we can do. We run the race as far as we can, and then God kind of carries us along the way. You know, he takes, we take one step and then he takes the 99 steps towards us, you know.

Pete Steve, I know I've told you the story, but I'm sitting in a hotel room, I think someplace in Ogden, Utah, outside of Salt Lake City. And I'm in a Marriott hotel. I call down to the front desk, may I please keep this book of Mormon?

I'm in seminary, I thought I might as well get a free copy. They said, we have to send somebody up. We went back and forth. They finally said, okay, just take it. And I opened it up. I don't know how to pronounce it, but it was the second Nephi, Nephi?

Pete Nephi. Pete Nephi. Yeah. Pete. And it said, you're saved by grace after all you could do. And it was so shocking to me that I, my bosom was burning, but not in the way that they were wanting it to.

Pete. With a righteous indignation. Pete. God loves me, LifeWay Ligonier survey, because of the good I do or have done 18%.

Pete. Again, you know, I can be kinder here and just say, if this is what you believe, then you really don't understand grace and you are missing out on it. Because God loves you, if you're a Christian, he loves you in spite of what you do, in spite of your self-serving motives, and in spite of everything else, you know, it really is the perfect love of the Father, you know, like we would want to love our kids, but we don't perfectly do it.

Pete. It doesn't take very long to have prepositions ruin your theology of grace. And so we say we're saved because of faith, we say we're saved because of our love for God. Those would both be incorrect.

We're saved in spite of what we do, but we're saved because of God's love. And so just think about how easy it is to pervert, Steve. You've got Clement writing, not long after Paul is gone to Corinth, and he says you're saved because of faith, instead of you're saved because of grace through faith.

All right, God loves me because of the good I have done or will do. And the Book of Mormon is a revelation from God. That's the last one. We only have 20 seconds, though.

Pete. Wait a minute, it really says the Book of Mormon is a revelation from God? Well, it's from, if it said God, small g, I'd probably go with that one. It's from Satan.

It's satanically inspired. Mike and Steve here on No Compromise Radio. You can write Steve at Tuesdayguy at No Compromise Radio or me, Mike at No Compromise Radio. Any parting words, Steve?

God bless and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

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.

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