JD Hall Interview

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. And as you know, if you�re a regular listener, we have a little theme for every day of the week.

And so Mondays, it�s usually a sermon that I preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Tuesdays, I talk to Pastor Steve Cooley and we discuss issues in the church. Thursdays, it�s kind of a positive

K -love, you know, this is the doctrine of forgiveness or confession or assurance of salvation.

And Fridays, I usually try to critique someone or some doctrine so you can think through it clearly.

But my favorite days are Wednesdays, and Wednesdays, I like to interview pastors, teachers, authors, men that God has raised up for His church, the church that Christ has purchased.

I like you to get to know these men better so you can understand their ministry. It also helps me because there�s lots of people who believe what we believe, we just don�t notice them, especially here in Massachusetts.

So today, we�re privileged to have on No Compromise Radio, J .D. Hall. J .D., welcome to No Compromise Radio.

Yeah, thanks for having me, it�s good to be with you. J .D., tell us a little bit about the church that you�re pastoring before we move into the conference in Reformation, Montana.

Tell us about the church there, how long you�ve been there, and how did you get there? How do you get to Montana? Well, it�s kind of a long story, but I pastor the

Fellowship Baptist Church here in Sydney, Montana. We have church plants also that we�ve started in the last couple of years on the

North Dakota side of the line. We�re only a few miles from North Dakota here, a couple of hours south of Canada.

The Reformed Baptist Church, we�re affiliated with the SBC very loosely.

I wound up here in Montana because I was in sales back in the day.

When you�re a bivocational pastor, sometimes you have to do what you have to do to get by. One day, as I was the manager of Car Lot, I was reading the

Bible online actually and came to Romans chapter 9, and it changed my life, it changed my view of God.

I was a believer before, but I didn�t see God in all of its fullness until then, and it just opened my eyes to a lot of things.

I grew very passionate about the study of God, and one of the things that I struggled with in Romans 9 is having to believe the

Bible the way it was written. I struggled with that. I wanted to believe the Scripture as I wanted to believe the

Scripture and see God as I wanted to manufacture Him in my head. Part of that, coming back to the

Bible and saying, �Okay, what does the Scripture say? What does the Scripture teach ?� I discovered a little -known thing called �church discipline.�

Being a young pastor, I decided to implement that into my church, or at least try, which ended up in me being released from the pulpit about two weeks later.

I thought, �You know, there�s a lot of baggage in the Bible belt. I want to get out of the Bible belt and be freed from some of that.�

You can consider that the coward�s way out, but that�s what I did. So I wound up in Montana, where there�s very little of the

Bible belt baggage. There�s very few Baptist churches at all, mostly Lutheran and Catholic territory.

I came here to Sydney a few months after that, and that was about eight years ago, and I�ve been here ever since.

J .D., when I think of North Dakota, I think of the place where Machen got sick and died.

So there�s life there, is what you�re telling me. There are believers in Montana, North Dakota, and the Lord�s Building is church there, too.

There are. I got here about three years before the oil boom, and so if you hear about the North Dakota oil boom,

I�m in it, kind of my town is at the epicenter. And so, you hear about the

North Dakota oil boom, but we�re right across the line, and there�s just as much production here. So, you know, we�re given a command to disciples of the nation, people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, and it�s interesting, because here in my little town in Montana, if you were to stand in my church parking lot and watch the cars go by, within an hour�s time, you�re going to see probably 30 or 40 different license plates drive by.

People from all over the country are here. So pastoring the church in Sydney here is kind of like pastoring a church on an

Air Force Base or in a tourist town, because there�s so much turnover, people coming in and out, but we�re privileged to share the gospel, disciple them, and send them back out.

But there�s certainly believers in Montana and North Dakota, and it�s a privilege to minister to them.

J .D., we�re similar in the aspect that we have radio shows and other ministries that stem from the church, but I know you have a heart for the local church, and I know you think that�s the place of God�s blessing, and this is where your heart is, in a local church and preaching.

What would our listeners expect to find if they were to show up for the

Lord�s Day worship service at First Baptist Church in Sydney? Yeah, if they were to show up, they�re going to see, first of all, a lot of friendliness, a lot of people that are eager to show their love.

Part of that has been ingrained into our people, because, again, the turnover, we�re used to greeting new people in faces that we haven�t seen before.

But, you know, we subscribe to the regulative principle of worship, and so even though we have what some would call,

I guess, the contemporary worship service, we do hymns mostly, but usually set to contemporary music.

We�ve got a drum set, and somebody plays the debay, and I�m not exactly sure what that is.

Thankfully, I�m not the worship guy, and I�m very lacking in that area, but we have gifted people.

And so, you would be surprised if you heard the first song then for us turn to the

Scripture, and between each song, read lengthy passages of Scripture, because Paul told young Pastor Timothy that as the church gathers, it should devote itself to the public reading of the

Word. And so we do that between each song. And then a sermon, of course, that is done in an expository fashion from the

Word of God. Right now, I�m in a sermon series, different than anything I�ve done before. I�ve been in it for about a year, maybe a year and a half, called �The

Sixty -Six Gospels.� As we�re working our way from Genesis to Revelation, stopping at each point along the way that we see a type or a shadow of the

Gospel of Jesus Christ, the point is to convey to the congregation that there aren�t just four Gospels in Scripture, but that every book of the

Bible centers on the Word of God. We�re in Ezekiel right now. I think it�s been very edifying for the church to see where Christ is proclaimed throughout.

We have services during the week. I teach systematic theology for Freedom Systematic. I�ve been in that book for probably five years or so, and I just picked up Joe Beefe�s book on Puritan doctrine,

Doctrine for Life, which we�re going to start a new study here in a few weeks. A lot of young people,

I don�t have a single retired person at the entire church. That�s for a couple of different reasons.

First of all, I didn�t really inherit any when I came here. The church was very small at the time, and older people typically don�t change churches.

Local people typically don�t change churches when the younger people do, and also because it�s the Bakken oil field, all of the people here working, you know, they�ve come here for work, obviously, so they�re of the working age, so very few gray -headed folks, mostly younger families, with lots and lots of children running around.

J .D., I have a question regarding the 66 Gospels that you were talking about, or the

Gospel in 66 books. When you got to Esther, tell our listeners what you did with Esther, because I�m always struggling with,

I want to be a pastor who preaches every Sunday about the person and work of Jesus Christ.

After all, we are Christians. But I also don�t want to find Jesus in every, you know, adverb found in Scripture.

And so, of course, with Esther, it has its unique challenges. Tell our listeners how you approached that book and what you said.

Well, it does have unique challenges, because it certainly appears that Esther is a foreshadow of Christ, but she�s a woman that Christ Jesus is not, and so that makes us, especially if we�re complementarians like we are, makes us very uncomfortable.

And sometimes I�ll be in a book of the Old Testament for like 12, 13 weeks. Other times

I�m there for one week. I actually preached Esther in one week, from one particular chapter.

I mean, I went through an expository passage, or, you know, a passage in an expository way.

But here�s what I did with the book of Esther, pointing out that Mordecai tells Esther, �If you�re not faithful,

God will raise up salvation from some other way, but you will have been unfaithful.�

And so we turn to the concept of evangelism that, like Esther, in a way is a foreshadow of Christ, because she helped to redeem her people.

God providentially used her to redeem her people. We, like Esther, should imitate our

Savior, Jesus Christ, to bring salvation to people. That God uses us in His providence to preach the gospel, to free us from the consequences of our own sin, to free us from the plot that has been hatched against us by Satan in this world.

And so, like Esther, we also need to imitate Christ in that fashion. And that if we�re unfaithful to preach the

Word of God, if we�re unfaithful to do our best to help deliver the people, that God will rise salvation from somewhere else, but we will have been unfaithful.

Talking to J .D. Hall today on No Compromise Radio. J .D., you are known for, �Hey, let�s hold

Lifeway accountable ,� and other issues like that. But on the flip side, you�re known for wanting to teach the truth, not just there locally, but in Montana as well, and so you�re part of Reformation Montana.

Tell us what your goals are for Reformation Montana, and also, selfishly, tell me what I should expect, since I think

I�ll be there in June. Well, yeah, you�ll be at the conference this year, which is

June 25th through 27th, and it�s going to be in beautiful Billings, Montana, it�s just a short drive down the interstate from Yellowstone.

The theme of the conference this year is the Church. We started doing the conferences four years ago.

Last month began because we were a little bit concerned that there was a very hostile attitude in the

Montana Southern Baptist Convention towards churches that need reform. And so we decided, �Well, let�s fellowship together and see if we can kind of build a very non -threatening but helpful coalition of like -minded churches.�

And what we discovered actually very quickly is that there were many more churches like us than what we knew about.

So there are about 19 churches in Montana that currently fellowship with us. The goal of Reformation Montana, or I should say �goals� in plural, you can find them on the website, which is

ReformationMontana .org, are things like equipping pastors biblically.

So a lot of pastors, especially among Baptists, are just thrown out there with literally no training.

We want to be able to help them learn how to exposit the Scripture, how to preach in a fashion that will make exegesis a primary purpose, to teach pastors that maybe don�t have access to higher education, teach them

Greek and Hebrew, and also to encourage expository preaching as much as possible to get people to return again to the privacy of the pulpit, the place of preaching in the church.

And then beyond that, just fellowship with one another, because when you�re in the Montana prairie or if you�re in the western part of the state with all the mountains, you may be several hours away from a like -minded church.

And so it gives us an opportunity to fellowship with one another, to be there as a brotherhood of pastors to help one another, to help each other�s churches.

You know, if a church needs something financially, they�ll reach out to us and we�ll do our best to be able to help that church financially, because independent churches, say

Bible churches for example, don�t have anyone to reach out to. And if they�re in a denomination that talks about the doctrines of grace, the truth is often they�re treated like the proverbial red -headed stepchild, they�re just not going to be able to receive any help, and we�re able to step in and help do that.

The first conference we had Paul Washer, and so that really kicked us off with a bang, and it�s been a pleasure to have his guidance throughout this entire process.

And also Phil Johnson�s been there, so we�re thankful that other people from the outside have been able to reach in and help a bunch of country boys from Montana put this together.

Now, when I�m up there in June of this year, Phil Johnson�s going to be there. Is there any way you can give me some advice regarding Phil?

Should I watch my back? Do I have to beware? You know, is there anything like that?

Do you need to give me any warnings? Let me say this about Phil Johnson. He is genuinely the kindest person

I�ve ever met. He has a reputation of being a bit of a bulldog. Because he tells you what he thinks, that�s what

Phil does. But he has been the kindest person to me. He genuinely cares about what�s happening in my own congregation, in my life.

Like his wife, Darlene, made my baby boy, Augustine, when he was born last year, like she hand -knitted him a receiving blanket.

I mean, who does that? Talk about the nicest, kindest people on earth. So you probably don�t have to watch your back at all.

But, you know, Tom, Phil Johnson�s been there. Phil is going to be there, and so is Chris Rosebrook. So it might be, like, I don�t know, an epic battle of the podcasts, but if we could put all of you, it might be a,

I don�t know, a cage fight, last man standing type thing among the most popular podcasts out there.

Well, I just think it�s going to have to be alphabetical, J .D. That�s all we have to do. Just go alphabetical by last name.

You know, so many of us, you know, they say, �Hey, there�s only three or four podcasts we listen to.

We listen to Pulpit and Tin. We listen to No Compromise. We listen to Wretched, and we listen to Pirate Christian Radio.�

So I think a lot of people are excited about having all their favorite podcasts host in one place.

Well, of course, I was joking about Phil. I, too, see Phil and John MacArthur as men who stand up for the truth, and they can be very polemical and very biblical and exacting.

But when I meet them personally, I just am impressed by, and I also say to myself, the way they act toward other people,

I want to do the same. When I�m in the Pulpit, I�d like to, you know, proclaim the truth with authority and boldness, but around folks, you know, behind the scenes, to just be nice and kind and warm.

And so I think Phil�s a good model of that. Yeah, I think so, too. And I think that�s how it has to be done.

And a lot of people, when you�re a public figure, don�t understand how you are in person. They assume that the lion in the

Pulpit is a lion everywhere else. I�m going to be honest with you. With Riffmont, we�ve come into contact with a lot of well -known guys that have spoken for us, whether it�s

James White, Neer�s Pastor, Bode Bauckham, you name it. I think

I�ve always been taken aback at how much different they are in person than in the

Pulpit, because it requires�listen, when you�re standing in the Pulpit, you�re saying, �Thus says the

Lord ,� not because of what you�re saying or the words you�re adding or even your exposition, but because you�re actually reading, literally, the

Word of God. And you don�t need to be saying, �I think, I guess, I suppose ,� because if you�re saying those words, you should say them outside of the

Pulpit. The Pulpit�s not the place for assumptions or the place for your opinions.

It�s the place to preach the Word of God. But outside the Pulpit, often, you�ll find these lions become lambs when it comes to dealing with the

Bride of Christ, individual believers, and it�s encouragement to me to be able to see this personally through the speakers that we�ve had at Reformation Montana.

J .D., tell us a little bit about pulpitandpen .org and describe it. The name speaks for itself, but tell us about the ministry there that you have and what�s your goal and what kind of topics you regularly address.

Well, Pulpit and Pen, we have a few different purposes lined out on the website. I think we did a post seven or eight months ago, �What are we trying to accomplish ?�

Someone called it the other day, �The Rolex of Watch Blog.� I�m like, �Well,

I appreciate the Rolex part. I think we�re more than a watch blog.� We do deal with a lot of corruption issues, particularly within the

SBC. We deal with a lot of discernment issues. People know that if they have something that they want to get out, if they bring it to the

Pulpit and Pen, we�re not going to hide from that. We�re not out there to try to impress anyone. When I say �we ,�

I don�t really write there anymore, but there are five contributors�six contributors, actually�Alan,

Dustin, Seth, Landon, Gene, AK, The Squirrel, if you�ve and Kofi from over in London.

These guys do a good job of adding new material, basically, to warn the church where there needs to be warning, to reprove, to rebuke and exhort.

Reproving is really warning people before they go astray by bringing them the evidence of Scripture.

There�s rebuking that has to be done. They�re also exhorting, which is a combination of teaching and encouraging.

That�s what we hope to accomplish there. We broke the Alex Malarkey story. The boy who did not come back from heaven sent this letter to us.

We posted it, and then it was really weird to see the Pulpit and Pen logo on the Today Show and Matt Lauer putting a picture up of our blog.

It became the top news story in the world. Two days, January 17th and 18th, in the

Washington Post and New York Times, the UK Daily Mail, the London Telegraph. It�s kind of a strange thing to see a blog you started a few years ago have so much readership.

I think it�s because people are clamoring for it. Truth is hard to find, so we want to be able to bring truth to people.

Now, at the pulpitandpen .org, your book there, Reason With Me on the Doctrine of Election, you can get a

Kindle, iPad or PDF. I love the subtitle. The subtitle is, �For those terrified, flabbergasted, horrified, distressed, or disturbed by God�s sovereignty over salvation.�

J .D., it sounds like that was an autobiography of you when you were reading Romans 9.

Yeah, it is. I think, you know, in accepting the Doctrine of Election, it�s almost like the stages of grief, where first you don�t believe it, and then once you believe it, you get angry at it, and then you accept it, but you don�t necessarily like it, and then finally come around to embracing it.

And so, I�ve been there. I actually wrote the book because there have been several, well, many people over the years, but several people, just in the last few months, families who�ve been at our church and been with us for several months, and then they heard the

Doctrines of Grace preached, and they did the same thing the multitude did in John chapter 6. They said, �It�s a hard thing to take it.�

They left. And, you know, I talked to them, and they�re like, �Well, we believe in missions, so we can�t go to church there.�

It�s like, well, you know, our church, which is not a huge church � I mean, we have probably 150 people or so � we give, percentage -wise, more commissions than any church that I know of.

Hands down, we support missionaries full -time. We do stream evangelism.

We hand out tracts to the church membership every single week. And when they get their bulletin, tracts fall out of it.

We want them to give them away. We teach men how to do evangelism and all of those things.

And so, I thought, you know, there are so many misconceptions about what it means to believe in the sovereignty of God over salvation.

I wanted to write this short treatise and get it out there to people so that they could see that, you know, we�re not believing what others call �doctrine of the demon.�

This is an accepted, orthodox view of God�s sovereignty over salvation.

So, I go over what it is and what it�s not, the misconceptions, the straw men, and explain that most � not all � but most of the great

Christian leaders of the last, well, the Reformation, and I think well beyond the

Reformation, held to this view and in no way has it hindered evangelism or mission.

So, I wrote the book to be able to give to church people � not members, but attenders � who really freak out when they hear the doctrine of grace.

So, if you know anyone that has heard the doctrine for the first time and it raises that red flag, they�re like, �Wow, why haven�t

I heard this before ?� They could listen to it on their iPod or read the

Kindle version or what have you. It�s just designed to help the church at large. J .D.

Hall is on No Compromise Radio today. We�re glad to have him. J .D., we�ve only got a few minutes left, but I would be remiss if I didn�t kind of ask you.

You know, this has all been so nice and kind and uplifting, and we�re not critiquing anybody. I saw a tweet by Andy Stanley, and it says,

March 26th, �We don�t believe� This is their Easter service promo. �We don�t believe Jesus rose from the dead because the

Bible tells us so.� It�s way better than that. �Plan to spend Easter with us.�

So, they don�t believe Jesus rose from the dead because the Bible tells us so. What�s your response to that?

Off the top of my head, it seems like he did an article a year or two ago about this. Does that ring a bell to you?

Well, what rang a bell to me was you asked me how I know he lives. He lives within my heart. It�s some kind of subjective pietism, but I don�t know what he�s trying to do with that.

It could be someone else, but I think I�m correct in saying he elaborated on that in some type of blog post last year.

As a matter of fact, I think I remember covering it on the Pulp and Pen Program, so I don�t think it�s anything new from him.

What is often said is we don�t need to say we believe it because the Bible says it. We need to believe it in part because Paul said it.

I think that�s what he said previously. Paul, or Peter, said this. Instead of just saying, �The Bible says.�

He even appealed to Billy Graham because Billy Graham, that�s one of his favorite lines, �The Bible says, the

Bible says ,� without giving reference or verse. But we do believe it because the Bible says it.

I�m a presuppositionalist as much as anyone, but I don�t think it�s simply about presupposition. It�s about what our conviction is regarding the inerrancy of the

Scripture. And even more than inerrancy, I call it the four legs of Scripture. Believing that the

Bible is inspired of God, believing that it is inerrant. Number three, believing that it is sufficient for us, which

I think is probably the most overlooked doctrine today concerning the Scripture. And fourth and finally, believing that the

Word of God is authoritative over us. And I don�t know what�s going through Stanley�s head.

Maybe he meant subjectively. We know this in our hearts. Or maybe he�ll provide some historical evidence for the resurrected

Christ, which is all good and true. But as Christians, we�re people of the Book. We believe that when the

Scripture speaks, it is in fact God speaking. So when we say we don�t need to believe something just because the

Scripture says it, what we are effectively saying is we don�t need to believe it just because God has said it.

Let God be true, though every man a liar. Talking today to J .D. Hall. You can also access lots of faithful preachers on wildernessradio .com.

The subtext is Faithful Theology, Faithful Preaching, Faithful Radio. And so J .D.,

thank you for being on No Compromise Radio today. Thanks for the ministry there at Refmont and from the pulpit and Wilderness Radio pulpit and pen.

I don�t know how you get any sleep, but we�re thankful for your ministry to the body of Christ. Thank you very much.

Mike Abendroth with J .D. Hall, No Compromise Radio. of God.