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T4G and Such
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. El Jefe, Tuesday man. Is it Tuesday boy, Tuesday man, Tuesday El Jefe? I�m having a brain malfunction. Tuesday Sarge. That is exactly right. I promoted myself.
Well, what were you though, in military rank, if you�re Sarge now?
In the military, I was a specialist.
Oh, okay. What�s under a Sarge, the level under Sarge? Corporal or Spec 4.
Okay, so Tuesday Spec 4. Well, I think now, I think, are they doing away, I don�t remember, they�re either doing away with the specialist rank or, you know, making them all corporals. And actually, my MOS, I always thought it was weird because we had a combat MOS, meaning if we went to war, we were going to be in there, right?
And so we should have had, we had some corporals and not all corporals. It was bizarre how they did the MPs.
That�s interesting. While we�re talking about it here, before we get into our show information and our topic today, what�s kind of like the weirdest thing that happened in the Army, a weird experience, something that, somebody did something really dumb, something that you�ll never, I mean, probably a thousand things happened, but out of a thousand, what�s the most memorable?
Could be good or bad.
Okay. Well, this is kind of a, this is, I mean, there are a lot of things, but this one comes to mind. We were out on a training exercise and we�re sleeping in a perimeter, we�re on 50 watch, meaning one person in the foxhole is supposed to be awake.
The other person could be in the tent sleeping. So I�m awake and I hear somebody from inside the perimeter and, and they give the password, they gave the right password, but I�m like, it didn�t sound right to me.
So we had this thing, he gives me the password and he comes around from the other side of my tent while I switched sides of the foxhole while he was going around the side of my tent. So he went to where he heard me and he pointed a flashlight and he said, �You�re dead.
And I pointed my rifle at him and I said, �No, you�re dead. And he goes, �You�re one of only two people on this entire perimeter to be awake. And I said, �Let me guess who the other one was. �Albert Reynolds.
And he goes, �How did you know And I said, �That�s my roommate. And I�m like, �We don�t mess around, man. Now were there real bullets in your gun? No. Okay. No, we had blanks and, you know, suppressors on them and all that stuff.
But it was, you know, it was to show how ready we were. And I guess the answer was our unit wasn�t very ready. And the Sarge, because he was in charge of the training evaluation, and so he went into our lieutenant and woke him up and, you know, told him he was dead and that everybody on our perimeter except for two guys were asleep.
Now, this has nothing to do with the show, per se, but it just one thing leads to another. What do you think, Steve? Is there any speculation? Because I don�t think we know the answer. Every time we see the centurions in the Gospels, or maybe every time, or close to it, they�re written about positively, in a positive light.
They�re the centurion at the foot of Jesus as Jesus is crucified. He�s saying, truly, this is the Son of Man, or the Son of God, and there�s a positive element to it. What do you think?
Any thoughts about that in general? It�ll be speculation, but I�m always pulling for the centurions. Well, it is pretty fascinating.
They�re my homies, you know. And of course, �centurions�, where we get the word �century� or �cents�, you know, they were the leader of 100 people. What do we call that in military terms? How many in a platoon or a battalion, do we know the numbers?
Well, yeah.
I mean, I used to, you know, it sounds more like, that would be kind of a small deal, a small company. I mean, because our company was probably about 200 back in the day. I mean, I�m sure they�ve reorganized things, because I think they�ve come around to more of a Marine-type organization.
I mean, we used to have a completely different org chart, you know, breakdown of units than the Marines, but I think we�re more like the Marines than we used to be, the Army, I mean.
Okay. Well, I like it that even centurions can get saved. Me too.
Yeah. I mean, I like that God saves all kinds of people and that he is able, nobody�s outside of his reach.
Centurions, you think they�d have a lot of pigment, not too much pigment? How�s that all work?
Well, they�re outside a lot, so, you know. They�re outside a lot. Let�s see, other questions I have for you. I mean, there were no office centurions, you know, back in the day. They didn�t have dispatcher centurions.
How about Richman and Lazarus? Parable, non-parable? Parable. Okay. Yeah. Does it describe hell? Should we get, you know, our doctrine of hell from that?
No. But I think we can understand this, that it�s one miserable place to be.
Absolutely. A guy still didn�t learn his lesson, he�s still only concerned about himself and his loved ones. Yeah. All right. All right. In front of me, I have, oh, anything else you want to talk about?
Any other kind of comments? You haven�t sat in that hot seat for quite some time. I know. No. All right. No. I have no comments. I do have our cards in front of us if we ever need them, strength through adversity, right?
This is the Joel Osteen.
Yeah. Our prime tip for the day, our Joel Osteen prime tip.
Ed Gibson flunked first and fourth grades, yet went on to become an astronaut. Until March 1978, Dr. Gibson and his Skylab four teammates held the world record for individual time in space, 2 ,000 hours.
Dr. Gibson logged 15 hours and 17 minutes in three EVAs outside the orbital workshop. What is your dream job?
What's stopping you? What I really like, though, though, it is the humility that Joel Osteen doesn�t even say that he's the one who broke the record. Well, I know.
Joel not Joel. I think he probably did. When are you going to expose who Joel not Joel is? I mean, that would be scandalous. Yeah. It would break the internet. I'm sure about that. I know. Okay. And since we've talked last, T4G has occurred.
Any comments about that? We weren't there. And you know what? I'm sorry to say this, but I guess I'm glad to say it now. I'm glad it didn't pay to go.
I would have been, well, I just remember the last time, you know, just being, just feeling like it was more like a business than I wanted it to be. You know, I mean, like the bookstore shuts down during the main sessions because you can't sell things on the Sabbath.
Because I guess they just, I don't know what the reasoning was, but it, you know, it just meant that the bookstore, every time you went in there was just a madhouse. Everything just seemed expensive. I, you know, I mean, would I ever go again?
Maybe. But they'd have to change the lineup some and change the focus of, I mean, T4G wasn't quite MLK 50, I'll say that. Yeah. Well, the first day it was.
Yeah. You know what? That's, and I was listening to some other podcasters and they said, well, that kind of hijacked, Platt's message hijacked the conference in terms of discussion, talk, flavor, mood of discernment ministries as they thought about it.
And of course, right after that, you had Dever leading the MLK 50 talk, right? That was MLK talk or whatever. So that first message when Platt talked about Amos 5 and then the Dever discussion, it gave it kind of a bad taste in my mouth.
I'm just, I'm really discouraged. You know, I think, I was mentioning in Sunday school this last week, to me, you know, if you look at the 20th century of evangelicalism, a lot of denominational splits, and it was always between the liberals and the conservatives over and over again.
Denominations would start, they would grow for a while, then they would split because the liberals wanted to go their own way and get involved in social justice and all that. And you know, deny certain elements of scripture.
And I look at it now and I'm like, well, how much different is this? You know, we're just looking at a major breakup of evangelicalism without the benefit of clean denominational splits, right? It's just, so it's, I think it's going to be ugly for a while.
Well, the gospel, together for the gospel, they get two more years to figure out what they're going to do next. I don't really know what their topic's going to be. And I guess if you have 10 speakers and then breakout sessions, it's maybe hard to control them all or something.
But there definitely was that flavor, that vibe of the whole, you know, racial reconciliation deal. And I don't know, what's next? Maybe we've done adoption, maybe if they've done abortion, maybe sex slavery will be next or something, whatever the latest evangelical trend is following the world's leading.
Well, and these are all, you know, I mean, we're not making light of it. These are all serious issues. The question is, should it be the focal point of the church? You know, when so many churches throughout our country and throughout the world really can't get the gospel right, you know, and you're going to call yourself the Gospel Coalition or you're going to be Together for the Gospel, and your focus isn't on the gospel, there's something wrong.
I know, Will.
Don't you think, Steve? All right, let's look at the Gospel Coalition for a second. You start up an organization, Parachurch, and that's not always wrong. And I don't know how many years it's been going, but it's pretty much, in my mind, run its course.
It's talked a lot about the gospel, and there's been a lot of good articles and good messages by the men, but it's like it's run out of gas because it's already talked about the gospel. I don't want to say enough, like you can, you know, you can over—but they've written everything they can think of, and so now they're doing other things and, you know, Every Square Inch and bakery and pottery and all the women's stuff, and now you add all the race things.
And when I typed in race or racism into the search engine at TGC, I think I got 800 articles. I typed in justification. I think I got 1 ,500, and it just seems like a disproportionate amount, and then now they have to talk about that all the time, and it just seems like, okay, it's time to shut it down, but payrolls need to be met and other things like that, and I don't think they are.
And actually, when it comes to T4G, in two years, I think it's going to be bigger. I think there's enough millennials, enough people who are younger, enough neo-Calvinists, enough cage-stage woke Calvinists—you know, that's the new one that's going around the internet now, that you have cage-stage Calvinists, now you've got the cage-stage woke stage.
Oh, yeah, because if you're not woke, you know.
And I think what's going to happen is it's even going to be bigger. It's going to be wilder. I'd like to know would—who's going to be the speakers? I mean, this last one—.
I can already tell you the title. It's going to be called The Great Awokening.
Oh, that's the third Great Awokening. You know, I would listen to John MacArthur, obviously, Kevin DeYoung, I thought he did a really good job. It seems to me that Lincoln Duncan, I don't know why he brought in the race thing or whatever, but my biggest problem, I think, was the Platt one, because I want exegesis, I want exposition.
If I'm going to go to a conference where the leaders of the movement kind of rally the troops—I've been in enough national sales conferences where all the sales reps fly in and they hear from some motivational speakers or the president or the national sales manager, and this is our strategy for the year, and you fly in and then you get, in my opinion, berated by Platt and exegesis, and his broad brush with, you know, basically all you people have problems when it comes to race, you white people, and he doesn't have any idea what's going on here.
Platt's last church and his current church, and then this is—I'm sure this is pride, but I challenge him to look at his staff and elders and deacons and congregation compared to their church demographic, compared to the city demographic, and compare it to ours.
Our church—and it's all by the grace of God, we only just preach the Bible, whoever comes comes. Our church is more ethnically diverse than his church, and he has the gall to lecture me and those 12 ,000 pastors, and we're too white and we need to do this, that, or the other.
He should have stepped down and given his platform to another black preacher from some other small town who would faithfully preach the Word, or Conrad or somebody.
Anybody who would preach the Word. You know, as you were talking, I was just thinking about next year's Shepherds Conference, and the topic there is exactly the topic, basically, of every—or what should be of every major conference, which is faithfulness.
We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We don't need to go shoulder-to-shoulder with the world and try to change the society, right? That's not our mission. I mean, I've just been mind-boggled just thinking about, you know, the Great Commission.
Jesus said, now, I want you guys to go around the world and change the society. He said, make disciples, right? How do you make disciples? By preaching and teaching the gospel, you know, and explicating the Scripture.
This is what we are to do, and everything else is just—it's other stuff. It's not the church's mission.
Everything in my mind for Sunday mornings has been revolving around Jesus, the great high priest. Jesus is prophet, priest, and king, and here he's shown as the king priest in Hebrews, and he is the mediator as God and man, right?
And it says in 1 Timothy 2, as I talked about on Sunday, there's one mediator between God and man, the Jew, Christ Jesus. No. The black Christ Jesus, the ethno-Christ Jesus, the German Christ Jesus, the Norwegian Christ Jesus, the Greenlandian Christ Jesus.
I mean, he could have said any of those things, I guess, but it says the man, Christ Jesus, without the article, so it's the quality of man. He is, by quality, with emphasis, a man. That's all. We have human race, as we've said many times on this show, you're either in Adam or you're in Christ, that's how we should think.
And as Steve just said, our job, our duty, is to discharge faithful preaching week in and week out, and then the Lord will do whatever. And if you judge somebody based on what they look like, well, that's on you, but just because you're white, you just don't do that, or just because you're black, you don't do that.
Our job is faithfulness. I cannot stand this, just this latest trend, and we're just talking about this now. Steve, what am I going to do? I've been to four seminaries, I don't have degrees from four, but I've been to four.
I've driven by four. Well, I drove by a fuller, too, you know. So that's five? Wow. I know. Wow. Oh, I drove by two begin, too. Well, and Princeton? Have you driven by Princeton? Princeton? Okay, there's another one.
Yale? Havod? We've driven... Wow. I have driven by 15 seminaries, and I still...and what am I going to do? Nobody's ever taught me about how to love people that are ethno-different, or whatever. Here's what I did do, Steve.
All right, here's what behind-the-scenes Abe and Drawthonian. I ordered on Amazon this week an MLK biography. I ordered a...I got a Nelson Mandela biography, and I got a Malcolm X biography, and a Black Liberation by, I think, Cone, I think is his name.
Oh, yeah. That's the main... He's the main guy. Yeah. And I'm going to read those as an experiment. A, I like biographies, right? Malcolm X, I think he's from Omaha, was from Omaha. So I like biographies, so that'll be interesting, because summer's coming up, and I like to do that.
And I'm...here's my prediction ahead of time. I will not learn one thing that will change my view of pastoral ministry in those four books. No, you won't. I mean, my... Because I can read something on Lennon, John, or... Vladimir.
Yeah.
My big woke moment was probably 16, 17 years ago, whenever it was, when the Malcolm X movie came out from Spike Lee. I went and saw it in a local theater up there. It must have been longer than that. I don't know.
I don't know when it was, but I went to a theater. It was pretty much a white area. And the only three people in the theater were me, a black woman, and her son. That was it. And it was a good movie, but I didn't catch any fervor for Malcolm X or anything like that.
A few years ago, I just listened to a lot of his messages, his speeches, because I wanted to hear him talk, because I like orators, and I like those that can use words persuasively, and it's just part of...
I don't know. I just like public speaking. But anyway, that's gonna be my experiment. I'm gonna tell you ahead of time that while I'll know more about those men and what happened in their lives, it is not going to inform my view of preaching or ministry, because I don't need to do exegesis of the people, I need to do exegesis of the text.
And then I look out and I think, these are the people that God has given us to shepherd, and we need to talk about a variety of things, but it's going to be from the Bible and based the text, because that's my job, and I just...
This isn't going to go away.
That's the problem. Well, and you know, one of the major things they talk about is racial reconciliation. And you know, the MLK thing, as we said, I think a few weeks ago, you know, said right on the website that this is a gospel issue.
And I've been saying over and over again, the gospel issue is, it's reconciliation between God and men, right? That's what Jesus Christ came to do. Now there is the fruit, I think, of belief, the fruit of the gospel, the fruit of the Holy Spirit will eventually involve reconciliation in a way that will boggle the minds of the outside world.
In other words, you know, all the ethnic strife, all the economic strife, whatever these things are, when we're in a body together, when we're in Christ, none of those things matter. I don't look at rich people differently.
I don't look at poor people differently. I don't look at black, white, brown, yellow, whatever, differently. Why? Because they're all my brothers and sisters in Christ. And I have a love for them. Why?
Because we all love the same master. We also love the same Lord. And the issue is vertical reconciliation, that is to say, reconciliation between God and men, the doing away with the strife and the enmity, and then the outflow from that is horizontal reconciliation.
It's so true.
I don't like it, Steve, back to this Platt thing, that he makes the issue for everyone. Okay, I think there are probably issues in the South, and there are issues in certain parts of the country when it comes to this topic of prejudice and discrimination and judging people based on how they look, you know, a James 2 type of thing.
I don't want to say race, because I don't believe in more than one race, and I don't want to say, therefore, racism, because I don't believe in race, right? It's the human race. I've been in a lot of operations and in surgery, a lot observing, and when they have you all draped up and your abdomens open up, and I walk into the room, I don't know if the person's white or black or anything else.
You can't tell? I can't tell. What? I know. That looks like a lung there. That looks like an esophagus there. I mean, and a bunch of blood everywhere. But anyway, I—you know, in Los Angeles, when we were at Grace Church, why did MacArthur not like it when Piper came and wanted to do his race message at the Shepherds Conference?
Well, because race isn't an issue at Grace Community Church, right? And here I am, quote-unquote, using the word race. But treating people wrongly based on how they look or their cultural backgrounds or ethnicity, nobody cared, right?
At the Bible study we had from Armenians—no, that's a real—. Not Armenians. That's right. They were Calvinistic all the way. They were like six-point Calvinist Armenians. And we had Cubans, we had everybody in between.
And same thing here in the Northeast where we are. Even outside of Worcester, it isn't an issue here. So Platt is making it an issue here because—and Nine Marks in their recent article, they're trying to say this is true for all these different places.
But you know what? Stay out of our church because we didn't have any race problem until you stuck your head into our church through social media and the Internet.
Well, they don't know anything about our church, you know. Again, getting back to this broad brush thing, please don't—you know, I'm going to use a term here. Don't use your white guilt and project it on me, you know.
Keep your white guilt to yourself, you know. My sins have been forgiven, you know. My grandparents had nothing to do with the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., you know, etc., etc., etc. I mean, this whole thing is just bizarre to me.
You know, I mean, getting back to Tabeti's article and all these other things, and it's just—just stop it. Let's just go back to what we're supposed to be doing. And you know what's amazing? What do you suppose our churches, our communities, everything would look like?
Well, let's just say Worcester. What if everybody tomorrow—what if everybody just believed in Christ? Do you think there'd be a lot of racial strife? And no. The answer is no. So the answer to the problem—I mean, is there going to be racial strife in heaven?
No. Well, why? You know, there's going to be people from every nation, tribe, and tongue up there. So why isn't it—because we're all one.
Steve, if we sent out from our church the Filipino deacon that we have, a black congregant that we have, an Egyptian congregant that we have, and we sent them out to do door-to-door evangelism, and five white people got saved and came to the church, what would we do?
That's not the right percentage. Yeah, we'd have to say, that's not—you guys aren't doing it right, you know. I know.
It's crazy. Anyway, if you keep thinking to yourself, all right, they had these Jews in the Old Testament, and these Gentiles in the New Testament, and these different kinds and tongues and races and all that stuff—see there, I used the word race again.
I don't like that.
Man, shame on me. It's just part of our nomenclature.
Anyway, Steve's right. When you look at the cross and when you think anthropologically, we're sinful people. And so, hey, I've been redeemed, you're redeemed, that's enough for me.
Well, and that is the whole purpose. Jesus is going to build His church. He's appointed the means, which is the faithful preaching of His word. That's what we need to focus on.
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.