Fred Butler 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.

The Show Format and Weekly Lineup

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we have a variety of different shows that we try to put together. Mondays is a taped sermon that has been preached at Bethlehem Bible Church.

Tuesdays, I talk with Pastor Steve about issues in the local church. Thursdays, I try to teach something positively, kind of like a K-Love Thursday. What is confession? What is repentance? What is Christ's righteousness?

And then Friday, we usually take some false teachers to task. Wednesdays, though, is the day I talk to authors and writers and bloggers and pastors. And so today is no different. I'm speaking today to Fred Butler.

Fred, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that. So tell us, Fred, what do you do and where do you work? I think probably some of the people have heard of your employer.

Yeah, yeah. I currently, I work at Grace to You Radio Ministries, and my primary duties is to oversee and kind of facilitate the wonderful volunteer ministry that we have here. We have several retired saints who come in.

There's probably about 120 or so. They don't all come at once, but they're spread out through the week and through the month, and they put together our special offers, the things that we send out through our mass mailing in order to raise support for our ministry.

And they're just a delight to serve. Most of our stuff is just hands-on, stuffing envelopes and bags and sending out books and so forth, those kind of things. And then they give me the opportunity to preach at them, which I relish that opportunity when I can get it.

And so it's a wonderful little ministry, great folks. Like having, I always say to people, like having 100 grandparents take care of me and my family.

It's quite a blessing. Fred, tell us a little bit about Grace to You. Years ago, everything went on the internet for free. And how has that worked out? I don't mean the details financially, but the vaults were open, and of course, Grace to You is still around, and so the Lord must be providing through donors now, or how is that all working?

Well, you know, that went fairly well, actually. We were surprised. I think it was a little bit of a risk to kind of open up and give everything away free. Our pastor has a big, generous heart, and I think he would give away everything free if he could get away with that.

But, you know, obviously, we have to pay bills and that sort of thing, but the people have responded well to it. I think it's just been a blessing to see going into avenues and areas where you don't normally get that opportunity, because things are available on the internet, and now places like in foreign lands that we would never even imagine.

I think there's some folks in Vietnam and just other countries where they have access to the internet and are able to get, you know, good, solid Bible teaching, really has kind of changed and shifted our way we're just sort of thinking about ministry and just the global impact of what we kind of do here.

It's, I don't know, it's really kind of humbling in a way, because we've been tasked with such a wonderful opportunity to do with that kind of stuff, with putting out his ministry, putting out John's teaching, so many lives.

It's hard to put words around it, in a way.

Fred, I don't know if my memory serves me correctly, but I think our listeners should call and get on the mailing list. Is it still 1 -800 -55-GRACE? That is correct. All right. If you're not on that list, listeners, you should either email or write and get on the list for the Ministry of Christ.

Gty .org is our main website, so you can get on there and sign up through the internet or call the 800 number.

Who's your boss at Grace to You?

Well, our, my main boss is a fella named Jay Flowers. He's the manager of our department, development, and that sort of thing. And Phil likes to think that he's a boss. See, that's what I'm after. Jay Shmay.

I don't care about him.

Give me a Phil Johnson story. We love Phil Johnson. What would our listeners like to know about Phil Johnson that's behind the scenes?

You know, my first memory of Phil Johnson, when I started working here and I was a punk kid and going to seminary, I remember we would go up to his office and he'd be playing Doom on his computer. He'd have, like, whenever Doom or Wolfenstein or something came out, I think, one of those shooter games.

I'm like, Phil, what are you doing? Oh, I've got this really cool program that I'm going to be in, so he's a lot of fun. He's a sweet guy, and I just love working with Phil. He always comes down and has some interesting story about some ministry-related thing that he's got himself into, and it's a fun time to hang out with him.

I'm glad Phil's on our side, theologically.

Yes, he's got the intellect and the chops and the snark, I think, in a way, when it's necessary to take down those folks who need to be taken down, so I appreciate that about him.

Hip and Thigh, Blogging, and Answering Theological Error

Fred, tell us a little bit about your website. You have a variety of blogs, the one I'm thinking about is...

Yeah, yeah. I actually have one main blog that I use. It's called hipandthigh .wordpress .com. Hip and Thigh is taken from the Old Testament book of Judges, Judges 15 -8, Philistine's Hip and Thigh. If you have the old King James Version, and I always loved that Hebraism, and it was really whipped up on the Philistines real good, and using that, I guess, in a way to interact with theological heresy and error and individuals that would try to steal sheep from the church.

It has nothing to do with joint pain medication or anything like that. I think some people get confused when they hear Hip and Thigh, but it gives me an outlet. I started it back in 2005-ish, and it gave me an opportunity to get my little pearls of wisdom, what little pearls that I do have, out on the internet, and to kind of engage world issues and topics and subject matters in an instant kind of way, because I could publish it that day, and it's given me an opportunity to kind of learn to write, to improve that, to communicate better.

We had a professor in seminary to write and engage your faith in God's Word and the sermon and all of those areas. The only controversy was some articles that I wrote kind of answering gay apologetics that tried to twist around the Bible to make it teach homosexuality is okay.

I've done a lot of things dealing with theological apologetics, areas like that.

Fred, I like it because it's kind of edgy a little bit, and I thought the Hip and Thigh was related to what you ate in Arkansas. Yeah, no. I know.

Yes. A lot of people, I used to get spam that would sort of suggest that, and I'm like, no, that's not what I'm about.

Forget that. Fred, on your website, you say, I'd love to hear from you even if you think I'm the stupidest, most disgusting person you have ever encountered on the internet. What's the maddest people have been at you, and why were they mad?

I think the two groups of people that get mad at me the most are, number one, atheism. When I write about some atheist issue, they're the first ones to lob comments. There's one fellow in particular that is all the time leaving a comment challenging something that I may have written.

I've dealt with him for many years, and I kind of get where I'm ignoring the guy. But they're angry that, how dare you challenge, say that I believe in God when I don't. You know, they yell at me. But the other group, believe it or not, that gets really mad at me are the King James only people when I talk about King James only-ism and just really how, what a terrible apologetic it really is to defend God's word.

They are bothered that I would take that issue up, and that's probably the most hate mail I get is from those two camps, and yelling at me about those two subjects. And they think I'm stupid, believe me, so that's why I threw that in there.

Strange Fire, Michael Brown, and Charismatic Excesses

Fred, with your latest series, you're talking about Authentic Fire, the book from Michael Brown, which is a response to Strange Fire. Chapter by chapter, you're looking over the book. Tell us a little bit about the Strange Fire controversy, and then why you decided to analyze.

Brown's Authentic Fire book. Yes, well, I came across Dr. Brown probably a couple years ago, actually. He has a, he's been doing some, oh, different areas of debate and that sort of thing with Dr. James White, if you're familiar with Alpha Omega Ministries.

And through James' ministry, I got connected to Michael Brown's ministry, liked his books on Jewish evangelism. They're really well done, and loved his stuff on answering kind of the homosexual polemics in America.

His last book on that subject, I think, is Something Queer Happened to America, or something like that. It's probably the best history on the subject of homosexual activism, and kind of what the church needs to know.

So I was familiar with his ministry through that, listened to his podcast. But he's also charismatic. And when we announced our Strange Fire conference, it's a subject and an issue that John really, really wanted to address, and I believe rightly so.

It took issue with that, and had a couple of articles that he put up on the Charisma News website, some opinion pieces, taking apart our conference, just saying, please, you know, get in touch with me first before you do this, and it's going to be devices, and so on.

And I think because I was the one guy who probably is most familiar with him, of course it just sort of snowballed from there. And he has been writing the body of Christ, and all kinds of things like that.

And after the conference, he decided he needed to write a book addressing and answering the claims of the conference. And to his credit, he sent us, when he got it completed, I think I got my copy in December, he sent us a copy and signed and everything.

And reading through it, and I, you know, honestly, I was not that impressed with some of the things that he raised. I thought it was a good attempt. I thought it was too quick, and talked about what John talked about.

John wasn't the only speaker there, there were a number of other men who spoke at the conference addressing various subjects. And but he published it anyway. A friend of mine in Canada, I only know this dear brother through the internet, he had come to Master's Seminary, but we just did not connect, you know, charismatic background, his name's Lyndon.

And Lyndon and I had sort of known each other leading up to this conference, because Lyndon on his website was really dealing with a lot of the things that Michael Brown was talking about. And so when this book was released, you know, Lyndon got it on Kindle and went and reviewed.

I was going to do the whole book by myself, all the odd-numbered chapters, and I took all the even-numbered chapters, and we're just sort of going point-by-point, chapter-by-chapter with some of his arguments and claims against the conference.

And you know, it's been, as far as I know, we're the only two people at the reviewers that are actually looking at his book and trying to answer it. And I often read on internet blogs and other places where they're claiming, oh, no one's answered this.

And I take great relish in sending them a link to my reviews and to Lyndon's reviews and showing people, yeah, this is answerable. It's not, you know, he's not really giving us anything that's heavy-duty here.

Continuationism, Cessationism, and Discernment About Charismatic Excesses

So Fred, when I'm thinking about Strange Fire and the charismatic issues and continuationism versus cessationism, and when you look at his book, Michael Brown's book, like in chapter two, he tries to say that he does address the excesses in the charismatic movement.

And then he, of course, as most people know, goes on Benny Hinn's show as a, I think, a fellow comrade. I don't think it was under any other auspices. How do we think through this biblically, and what kind of discernment should we have when he says he goes after the excesses?

And in my mind, MacArthur said, well, you guys didn't police this for the last 20 years. So you've basically forced us to say something about these crazy things.

Yeah, he in that same chapter, because I reviewed that chapter, he has a big section in there where he makes the claim that, hey, I've been one of the most vocal opponents to the bad stuff in charismatic circles for years.

And, you know, before John even thought about Strange Fire and before even Charismatic Chaos was published in the early 90s, I have been writing against these things. He defines excesses, though, not as we would define excesses.

He sort of defines excesses as being, I guess you could say, televangelists who use manipulative fundraising techniques. It's one of the phrases he uses in his book oftentimes. And he doesn't really go after their heresies.

And in that same chapter, he also names, I think, the late David Wilkerson, the guy that was Assembly of God pastor that was in New York, the Cross and the Switchblade pastor, and even some other people like John Wimber and even Benny Hinn, of all things, in the footnotes, claiming that they go after the excesses, that they are individuals who speak against these things and decry, you know, the abuses in charismatic circles.

And I'm sorry, I just I just do not see that. And I think John's focus when he thinks of thinking the bad doctrine that is often attendant with charismatic theology, like the thinking that spirituality is going to a service and getting slain in the spirit or jerking around or jumping around or barking like dogs and that sort of thing.

And that is not defining those. When he goes on Benny Hinn's program, that was that was kind of a strange. I mean, don't you mean on one side he's saying, I've never really followed Benny Hinn, but then later, well, I knew some about this, but I wasn't really sure.

And he even comes out that, you know, and it's like one little thing where Benny Hinn's talking about believing Jesus for salvation or something. And, you know, I'm sorry, that's just not addressing the issues that really matter.

For go ahead. No, that's right. I was going to say he could have said that, you know, Benny Hinn called out Joel Osteen and other pragmatists.

Yeah. But, you know, listen, that's just one show that that Michael Brown went on. If you search the Internet, he's been on Cindy Jacobs television show. Cindy Jacob, you know, to be blunt, is a loony.

She's on a TV show that where she claims that God multiplies her food and that she has the ability to multiply bread at a communion service to feed three thousand people like Jesus did. Now, Michael Brown went on that program and he's basically promoting his book on, you know, Jewish evangelism or something.

But do people go away from Cindy Jacobs program thinking about, I mean, they're looking for the miracles that she's claiming to have and claiming to promote. He goes on Sid Roth's program frequently. If you're familiar with Sid Roth, he is like the I think I likened it to the coast to coast AM with George Nori guy for charismatics.

He's got people on there regularly who claim to go to heaven, who claim to command angels. One guy who's doing some kind of pursuit of the Nephilim, you know, it's just all of this weird stuff. And then there's Michael Brown talking about, you know, gay activism.

Well, that's good. He's not promoting wacky stuff, but he's with a guy who does that frequently. And it's terrible. I mean, that's what kind of message is that showing you if you're going on a television program, even though you don't agree maybe with some wackiness, the fact that you're there and everyone around you on that program is wacky.

You know, why are you not saying something about that? That to me, that's just terrible. He's even been to Bethel Church in Reading and spoken there at their church. I don't even I think that's a cult.

I don't even consider that church to be a biblical church. The stuff they do there is a New Age mysticism and a necromancy because they believe that you can teach your kids to lay across the graves of dead charismatics and suck up their anointing.

Where is that taught in the Bible? Seriously. You know what I mean?

See, you're not you're not supposed to make me laugh, Fred. We're talking to Fred Butler today, hipandthigh .wordpress .com. Fred, we've got about five minutes left. Tell me if I said to you charismatic Calvinists, this is kind of a new thing.

Of course, there are some like D .A. Carson or Grudem. But what do you make of charismatic Calvinists? And what do you predict will happen with the next generation of charismatic.

Calvinists? Yeah, that's a that's a hard one to kind of because I'm sympathetic to Calvinism, of course, and I'm Calvinistic in my theology. But at the same time, I just see this inconsistency with the things that they what historic biblical grounded Calvinism has taught, which is the sufficiency of God's word.

It is the promotion of God's word. It is the giving of God's word as a, you know, as a revelation. And I think they would all agree and affirm those doctrines. But then they get into this area of, you know, thinking that there's fallible prophecies.

Some groups will claim that apostles are still around or that certain men can be apostolic in their ministries, strange phenomena, other things like that. And they'll challenge you and say, well, don't you believe God can still heal?

Well, yeah, I'm not going to put limitations on God, but when you look at the scripture as a whole, is it God's purpose to still have gifted people who go around and lay hands on individuals and heal them with a touch?

I just don't see the more important thing has to do with they're going to claim that, you know, this is kind of direction and to, you know, feed your spiritual life and you've got to get something from some encounter with God.

I just don't see that Calvinism and what Steve Lawson did a good job, I think, in two of his messages at the Strange Fire Conference, addressing that very concern and just sort of looking at what the various Calvinists at the time, you know, encountered, like, you know, John Calvin and the Libertines that he had to deal with.

And I think it was John Owens and the Quaker, kind of a branch of.

Sola Scriptura Versus Subjective Impressions

Charismatics teach. Well, Fred, as far as I'm concerned, people can say they believe in sola scriptura, but really, if they're going to do the impressions and mystic subjectivism and feelings and all that, it's no longer sola scriptura, it's primus scriptura.

They have scripture first and then all these other things follow. It fascinates me that most of these charismatic Calvinists would say no to Rome's traditions, Rome's magisterium, but they'll say yes to a charismatic feeling or impression.

How do you explain that?

Yeah, that's another inconsistency that I've often tried to ask them about, and it's the same with a lot of, you know, historically charismatic doctrine comes from the Methodist Church, which has been strongly anti-Calvinistic and very pro-Arminian.

Their views have been that there can be sort of this perfectionism with regards to human sin, that you can somehow achieve, you know, sinless perfection. I'm not saying that all Pentecostals and charismatics believe that, but I think a lot of their doctrines kind of emerge from that matrix.

And, you know, if you're going to say that you're, you know, Calvinist and you're still able to receive these impressions, you know, like these Roman Catholics and, you know, what distinguishes you guys from one another?

Why is your impression valid just because you're a Calvinist, but this guy over here who might come from a Roman Catholic background or some hardcore, you know, Arminian background, his, you know, his impressions aren't valid?

I mean, I don't understand how you can make that determination.

Fred, I'm going to have to cut you off. So glad you could be on No Compromise Radio. Yes, it was a great time. Thank you. Hipandthigh .wordpress .com, or you can go to gracetou .org for some information there with John MacArthur, and I love reading your site.

It's stimulating, provocative, just No Compromise style. So thank you, Fred.

You're welcome. 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.