Sola Sola

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.

Banter, Christian Media, and the Gospel for Asia Apology

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Pastor Mike Abendroth here with Pastor Steve Cooley. Did you ever get used to having people call you pastor? Yeah, but you know what I have to How long did it take?

Probably about five years. I think Seriously. When you do that thing with your eyes, I already know it's gonna be a sidewinder's coming.

No, I mean, seriously, I think it would probably be, if somebody called me senior, I'd probably turn around still, you know, because I'm just so used to hearing that, so.

Steve, on the Twitter feed, I do follow FakeAnnVosKamp. Really? Mm-hmm. Okay. Good for you. And there's, it's always signed with hashtag 1000 tips. And so here's one of the tips. Hmm. Grace headphones can drown out a lot of arguing.

Hmm. That's deep. I mean, that's one of those kind of,.

That belongs on one of those little, what are those little figurines? You know, those little, I mean, that's just, I could see one of those little love figurines. What are those things called? You know what I mean?

Love is kind of thing, you know? And then there's one with headphones on saying something stupid like that. Oh, sorry, did I say stupid?

Oh, well, in front of me, I guess this is no laughing matter. Gospel for Asia apologizes. How do you pronounce the president of Gospel for Asia's last name? Yohanan? Yeah, I would say Yohanan. Wasn't that a lyric from the Tom Tom Club?

I don't know, not one of my groups. You know, Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, not my thing. All right.

Well, there is a full page apology ad in the Christianity Today dated December, 2015. I should put it in Spanish, lo siento. Now, the cover of this magazine has brand evangelists. What's behind the multi-level marketing phenomenon making its way to your church?

Steve, I have to tell you, I'm pretty much done with Christianity Today. They don't even really give me good articles to critique anymore,.

Because it's article-less. Well, why don't you want to start your own kind of brand of Christianity and then multi-level marketing? Come on. Now, what does that mean? If we get like 10 churches below us, then do they all give us a percentage of their giving?

And then if they start 10 churches, then we get a percentage of the giving, you know, like a giant pyramid scheme?

Maybe one of our listeners could correct me if I'm wrong, but my hunch would be, my guess would be that the Harvest Bible Chapels probably have to give some money to the Mother Church.

Oh, so kind of like a pyramid scheme.

Well, I didn't particularly say that.

I had to couch it in my opinion because I didn't want to get sued.

So kind of sending an offering to Rome. Oh!

See? I did notice in Christianity Today, Thomas Nelson, the book Glory Days by Max Lucado. It looks exactly Is it a biography of Bruce Springsteen?

No, it looks exactly like The Glory of Heaven by MacArthur. Yeah, the cover is very similar. Isn't it? Yeah.

Do you read Max Lucado very often?

Oh, all the time.

When I get a free copy of his book. K .P. Yohannan, President, Gospel for Asia. Greetings, many of you are aware that the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, ECFA, recently terminated our 36-year membership.

We understand this has caused great concern and raised questions about the integrity and financial accountability of Gospel for Asia. They're in trouble. Big time trouble. Big time trouble. Circle in the drain.

I think Do they have a 1 -800 number there that you can give to?

Yeah, basically. How about this for apology, non-apologies? Sorry, sorry, not sorry? Seriously, we are sorry for the pain and confusion that we have caused. Try that with your wife.

I'm sorry for the pain and confusion. No way. I mean, seriously, try that next time. Instead of, I'm sorry for what I've done, please forgive me for what I've done, try, I'm sorry for the pain and confusion you may be experiencing.

The last sentence, it says, thank you for standing with us during this humbling season as we continue to learn and improve.

Yeah, please somebody put the plug back in the bottom of the sink.

I don't give to Gospel for Asia, and now looking back at this, I'm glad I never did. Preach. Do you tend to give money to Christian charismatic organizations? No, I don't, no.

No, I mean, they're typically well-known organizations. You know, I don't know. I don't wanna plug any on the air, but like grace to you.

Personal Giving, Christian Radio, and Early Discernment

Now, when I first got saved, Steve, a cursory reading of the New Testament would reveal that since Jesus gave his life, Christians should be givers, time, money, et cetera. Okay. That sounds very simple.

Yeah, I wouldn't disagree with that. And then I realized that there was no church that I was a part of, so I listened to Christian radio and I began writing checks to Christian ministries. I did something similar,.

Only I wasn't quite as smart as you.

Okay, yes, but I think I was of average intelligence when I sent money to Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll. Yeah, that was pretty good. That was not bad. That was a good shot. But I sent money to, I hate to admit it, Bob Larson.

I wrote a check to Bob Larson. Now, look at how naive I was. I called Bob I did worse. I called, oh no, hold on, let me just finish. I called Bob Larson's ministry and said, I know you're talking about, it wasn't the demon possession thing at the time, but something else.

And I live in Burbank, California, and when will he be in town? Because I'd like to help X, Y, and Z, and I'd like to get plugged in. And I just got the complete runaround because they didn't want to do any of that.

It was just send your money, and we know how to put the envelopes in those bill extractors, and it takes the dollar bills out of the check. It throws your prayer requests away. Who'd you give to?

I'd like to say Dwight Yoakam, because Dwight Yoakam would be better than who I gave it to.

Dwight Yoakam. What does his forehead actually look like? I mean, he's always got that I've seen him without a hat.

I mean, like in movies and stuff, yeah. I gave to Dwight Thompson, who's a TBN guy. I mean, you know What's his forehead look like? Many things I don't know, but I'm still on the TBN newsletter list because I gave to somebody associated with TBN.

If I had to quote my father, if I had a dollar for every time you showed me one of your TBN full-color newsletters They're so awesome. So filled with garbage. We would have some fun times over at my house or your house, and we would turn on TBN, especially the healing ministry of Benny Hinn, and we would yuck it up, but my wife didn't like it.

I haven't watched it for a while, but I just saw a little meme of MacArthur on Facebook where he says, you know, I turn on TBN sometimes just to get myself fired up because there are times where I'm like fairly thinking, you know, that maybe some of the fights for doctrinal purity are over, and then I turn on TBN for 15 minutes, and I'm raring to go.

True story, Steve. When I would drive to the church building in West Boylston, Bethlehem Bible Church, they had on the radio, I think it was an NPR channel or something, they had a sermon on the radio that happened to be the exact time I would drive in.

So I think it was between 7 .30 and eight. I would get there at eight o 'clock for elder prayer and then discipleship, et cetera. And I would listen to this junk, this gobbledygook, this, remember those things we would have as children, and it was plastic goop, and you would pour goop into a metal mold, and then you would bake it in a little oven, and then you could tear out a spider.

Or a beetle or something like that. And it had a really funny smell to it too. Yeah, that was plastic goop. I loved plastic goop.

And then they came up with something else that maybe you remember, maybe you weren't allowed to have these in Bakersfield, incredible edibles. And they were edible molds, edible things that could go into a mold, you'd bake it, then you could eat the animal.

I need to correct the record, I grew up in West Covina. Oh, that's right, by that Safeway that turned into a West Covina Calvary Chapel. That is absolutely correct. I think I went up to a few altar calls to that place.

Did you? The first book I ever bought as a Christian was in that church building, which was a Safeway building in West Covina. They had a bookstore adjacent to the Calvary Chapel entrance. And I walked over there and guess what book I bought?

I didn't know what to do. I didn't know, you know, do you buy Christology? I wouldn't even know what any of those words were. I have no idea. I bought Agony of Deceit by Michael Horton edited. Wow, really?

Yeah, C. Everett Koop wrote a chapter.

And I don't know who else did. That must have been a shocker back then.

That was all the TBN critique stuff. Yeah, yeah. Agony of Deceit. Wow. So Steve, that propelled me into the current discernment ministry that I have now.

Discernment, I always wanna go desert.

The Five Solas and the Roman Catholic Critique of the Reformation

Steve, I have in front of me the catholicbible101 .com website, well, a printed form of it. And it says James 2 .24 at the top, underneath this sentence. During the Protestant Reformation, the reformers invented five Latin solas that summarize their Protestant belief system about getting saved.

They are sola fide, sola scriptura, sola gratia, sola Christus or solo Christo, sola dea gloria. And this one talks about salvation by faith alone. And it's fascinating. Let's take a look at these and see if they're still viable today.

The first thing that is striking is that they all are alone. Then why do the other four even exist?

That sounds like a Steve Martin line. I know. Steve Wright or something. Yeah, why do the other four even exist?

In other words, if we are saved by scripture alone, then why do we even talk about grace or faith? Why do we need scripture when we are saved by grace alone? Oh, I... Can you imagine? You know, Protestants do some dumb things too.

But we don't have Protestant Bible 101 in front of us.

If I may just state the obvious, here's the thing. Why do they suppose that the reformers, quote, invented these five points? You know, they invented them. And again, I'm using air quotes without sticking out my tongue, unlike my granddaughter.

Because of the over-the-top craziness that was present in the Roman Catholic system. You know, when you started comparing what was going on there with scripture, you're like, okay, that is wrong. So how do we formulate what the Bible actually says?

So it was a response to the, what's the word I'm looking for? The over-the-top formulaic, you know, money system, the indulgences, the whole nine yards that Rome had become.

A quick search shows that only one of the solas, the words faith alone, does appear in the Bible as follows.

A search reveals that Trinity does not appear in the Bible.

James 2 .24, you see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.

A search reveals that the word second coming does not appear.

This website says, strange that the one sola that does appear in the Bible contradicts the very sola itself. Well, of course that passage is peppered with you see, you see, you see. Steve, I'm not sure if you can, but I know I cannot look at a person and tell with 100 discernment that they're a Christian.

Well, I put on my discernment specs, and which I got from the back of a comic book I sent in 1995, and That's good. You know, and I can tell.

And what James is doing is the opposite of what Romans 4 is doing. You're justified by God's work alone, and no works or anything like that. It's through faith, not because of faith, the non-meritorious instrument of faith Romans would talk about.

And here, what is James attacking? James is attacking a different problem, not adding works to the righteous standing of a person, but here he's attacking someone who says, I am born again, I am a new creature in Christ, and I don't have any good works.

I just have faith and it doesn't work.

Yeah, nothing in their life reflects it. So, you know, Roman Catholics like to, you know, set somehow James in contradiction to Paul. And, you know, it's just not true. Listen, we don't have an issue with James.

We like James. We're fully in favor of that. We think that if you are saved, there is fruit that accompanies your life, right? Galatians 5, it is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. He produces fruit. It's not us, but it's just inevitable.

If God's at work in you, you exhibit a changed life. There are works attached to your faith.

Catholic Bible 101 goes on to eloquently say, applying the word alone to scripture also means that anyone can properly interpret it without the magisterium or sacred tradition. In other words, the Catholic Church only claims infallibility with the official documents of the church spoken ex cathedra by the Pope.

This solo claims that anyone and everyone who interprets scripture on their own is infallible. Is that what it says? And then with the grim rejoinder, and how wrong is this today with over 30 ,000 Protestant denominations with some even claiming homosexuality is no longer sinful?

Which is clearly false. First of all, there aren't 30 ,000 denominations. Secondly, a Christian denomination that says homosexuality is no longer sinful is not a Christian denomination. It may have the title Christian.

This is what unbelievers do, right? They say that anybody who says they're a Christian has some right or claim to it, which is false. So yeah, this is just rubbish. Do they have Catholicism online 201 as well?

Steve, I just figured out a good name, a good title for this show. Oh, what is it? Sola Sola. Sola Sola. Well, we move on to the next one. The grace alone isn't found in the Bible either. Catholics would agree that we are indeed saved by grace, which is a free gift from God.

Where we differ is the method of how we receive that grace. The Catholic Church regularly dispenses sanctifying grace, the sacraments. Well, at least they got something right there.

For at least what they teach. Well, yeah. Let's think about this. Grace that you get by participating in the sacraments. What would that be? Grace, so it would be unmerited favor. No, it's not unmerited.

The gift that I earned. Yeah, it's merited favor. You know, and what does Paul say about that?

Well, if you want to add, to use the Abendroth translation of Romans 11 .6, if you add just a little dust of works, you get no grace. And who wants that? Oh, yeah. Who wants that? Well, if you're trying to control people, or get money from them, or manipulate them in some fashion.

But the amazing thing in part about grace, no Catholic, by the way, should ever sing Amazing Grace, because it's really not amazing. De-mazing. Hey, you know what? I think I'm gonna tweet that out. No Catholic should ever sing Amazing Grace.

See if that gets any response.

How about this? I will double dog dare you. I will retweet it if you do. Okay, well, I'm going to. I'm gonna go home tonight. Hashtag 1 ,000 gifts. The fourth one, Christ alone, according to the CatholicBible101 .com, also sounds great.

Who could argue with the fact that we're saved by Christ alone? The problem is that the third person of the blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit, also plays a huge role in our salvation.

And what about the fourth person of the Trinity, Mary? You know, if she's not involved, forget about it. And again, they missed the point. What a shocker. They missed the point in that he is sufficient in and of himself.

It's his perfect life, his death, his resurrection. That is sufficient. There's no purgatory. There's nothing that we can do or add. You know, nothing that Mary did, nothing that, I want to say Helen of Troy, nothing, you know, no person, no person in history.

There's no treasury of merit. There's nothing. It's all Christ's will. Let's put it this way. If there is a treasury of merit, it's all Christ's merit. Nobody else can put anything in the box.

Steve, you might think this next one I would make up. I'm prone to Hyperbole. Yeah, hyperbolic understatements.

There's one to write down. Hyperbolic understatements, kind of like government and security or national intelligence or, you know.

Quote, Catholics could come up with a lot of these solas. Since the Bible says that we must eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus to have life within us, John 6, are you ready? Oh, I don't want to hear it.

Then we could stand by or say that we are saved by the Eucharist alone.

That is so bad. I mean, I don't want to hear it. If you study John 6, and I would encourage you to study John 6, you would never come in a million years to the Roman Catholic interpretation, ever. You cannibal, you.

Well, I mean, the people there in John 6, when he said, you know, unless you eat of my body and drink of my blood, you know, you have no part of me kind of thing. If they understood that that was salvific, they would have been appalled, but they were even more appalled because they thought it was, you know, literal, and that's why they left.

Steve, let's approach Mark Burnett and his wife, Roma Downey. Downey, yeah. And let's do a survivor pitting two different groups, the Catholics and the Protestants.

And that would make for good TV. Yeah, they can have the Eucharist and what we have.

Yeah, well, there's the one team, it's the Eucharist alone. You know, they like to give the tribal names. Yeah. You know, Kumbh Chakta or something is one of their names. And then something about the Eucharistas, and what would the Protestants be?

I don't know. Sandinistas. The sandal-nistas. And since Paul talks about the value of personal suffering for the church in Colossians 1 .24, we, the website says, could say that we are saved by suffering alone.

Anyway, you can't make up stuff like this on no-compromise radio. That's just, that's terrible. And listen, we've said this many times. It's not like there absolutely cannot be Christians in the Roman Catholic Church.

Here's the thing. What the Roman Catholic teaches itself is damning heresy. I'll say that again. What the Roman Catholic Church teaches is damning heresy. The Reformation is a response to heresy. And so, they were going back to the basics.

They were looking at what scripture said. And so, when we talk about the five solas of the Reformation, you know, no, they didn't invent them. No, they didn't make them up. They went to the Bible, and that's where they came up with these doctrines.

Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now, and the Absurdity of Self-Help Religion

Steve, to rescue the show,.

I think we need to go to the game, Your Best Life Now, by Joel Osteen, that I actually have a copy of, thanks to one of our visitors who gave me such a copy. Are you gonna let me choose a card? Yes, but I only have two cards, and why don't you choose that one?

Now, read the front, though. Read what it says. Choose to be happy. Uh-huh, now, you get A, B, or C. So, you can choose whichever one you want. You should choose it ahead of time. I'm gonna go with C.

Okay, go ahead and read that. What is the funniest thing you have ever seen while driving in a car?

Oh, no, this is bad for an ex-cop.

Funniest thing I've ever seen while driving in a car.

Now, remember, it's under the theme of the card, choose to be happy, and mine has a little seven underneath it.

Okay, I mean, so many things, but, you know, I'm gonna have to go with this one, even though it was funny and absolutely appalling at the same time. There was a man sprawled out across the top of this steak bed truck, holding down cardboard so that the cardboard wouldn't fly away.

And I just remember, I stopped the vehicle, and I'm like, to them, think about this, the cardboard was more important than the person on top. And you just go, now, it was, this is before I was saved. Now, in a certain respect, I thought it was crazy funny because who would do that?

Who in their right mind would do that? But it was also sad at the same time, because I just thought, what are they really saying here? You know, that cardboard is so important. Dude, get up there and risk your life, you know?

Okay, my turn, I'm gonna pick A.

Write down something funny for another player to say.

Write down something funny for another player to say.

And now I have to say, forget you.

And really, I said it too slowly because it ought to be one syllable, forget you.

The other one, it says, I mean, how much time did they spend coming up with this game? Not very long. Make a funny noise without using your mouth.

Well, I mean, we, listen, I'm, I am.

This is Joel Osteen at his best. At least he's not slaughtering Bible verses here.

When it comes to games, I'm kind of a Gamester of Triskelion. An aficionado, you know? I mean, it's kind of a hobby of mine. And I looked at that game and I'm telling you what, seriously, they took a sixth grader and said, make us a game and do it now, you know?

And it has less sophistication. You could do better buying Monopoly and thinking, oh, this is sophisticated than this game. It's terrible.

Listener Feedback, Ordinary Faithfulness, and Closing Remarks

Steve, this just came through an email from Susan. I won't tell you her last name, but here's a P .S. She did sign her name, His Galley Slave, Susan. P .S., true. This is true. Really enjoy Tuesdays, also on the radio program with Steve.

I love that you both have such passion and are just as tired as we are of all the nonsense. Amen. I thought she was just going to leave it at just as tired as we are. No, no. So the end is, so lay off the Catholics, pal.

Oh, okay. Sorry. Sorry, Susan. Well, we just have one minor comment to make. That would be Susan alone would think that. All right, what are you teaching in Sunday school?

What's going on with you? We got 30 seconds. I'm going through Michael Horton's book, Ordinary, because I just think, you know, too many people are dispirited because they just think there's nothing for them because they're not going to be this wonderful missionary or what have you.

Putting the extra back into ordinary? Yeah.

I mean, yeah. I think people just need to focus on being faithful where the Lord has placed them.

Putting the self back into righteousness. This could be a whole thing. No, that wouldn't be. I can't wait to see your tweet later today. So you want to go at the Tuesday guy.

No Roman Catholic should ever sing Amazing Grace.

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 six. 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.

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