Pope's Blood and Wedding Vows

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 Avendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry. My name is Mike Avendroth, and we are sitting here,

I am sitting here today, alone in my study, looking outside. It's a drab

New England day. You'd think we were in Seattle or something, but we are in the middle of New England. If you look at the

New England states and just put your ballpoint pen in the middle of that, and in the middle of New England, you will find about where we are, just north of Worcester, just north of Worcester.

It's funny when my GPS is telling me where to go, it doesn't know how to speak New England. And so it'll say, turn left on Worcester.

And of course, it doesn't pronounce things like the people in New England do either. So, A -U -B -U -R -N,

Auburn, of course, the New Englanders pronounce that A -W -B -I -N, Auburn.

But my GPS doesn't know that. And my old GPS, it could give me the difference between women speaking and those with a

Scottish accent and those with an English accent and those Australian accents, whatever

English I picked, and then I could do male or female. But this one I have on my iPhone. It doesn't give me the option.

I am stuck with Worcester. And if you have your radio on, you're stuck with me right now.

Yes, you could be listening to, oh, who knows, a whole plethora of people out there, but you're listening to no -compromise radio.

And for that, I'm very happy. I am a no one who knows the great someone, as someone once said.

I am a sinner saved by grace. I compromise all the time, but it is my desire, A, not to, but mainly, it's my desire to not compromise because we serve,

I serve, to make it more personal, I serve the one

Christ Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man who never compromised. He always did what was pleasing to the

Father. He always obeyed the holy law, and he is our great substitute.

And so today on no -compromise radio, I just have a potpourri of things. I have Mike's miscellaneous today, some things that are on my desk that I would like to talk about.

And since I'm about 35 shows ahead, by the way, for my listener, my listener friend down in Florida, I am now,

I'm coming up on, I don't know, how many days, 60, 70, 80 days without aspartame.

Now, once in a while, I sneak a little Splendor. The Splendor Gates of Splendor. I just threw,

I did that on purpose. I have some Splenda once in a while in a Diet Hansen's soda, but it has no caffeine.

I'm trying to drink more tea now in the afternoon, more water, actually. I know it's a funny concept for me, the

Diet Mountain Dew drinker. Diet Coke, I don't really Jones for Diet Cokes that much anymore.

Once in a while, maybe if I'm having some nachos or something, but it was pretty much like giving up the drugs that I gave up, and alcohol, and tobacco, and all that stuff, where you just, after a while, you just learn to live without it.

So today on no -compromise radio, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. Mike's miscellaneous.

And I got the guardian .co .uk article the other day from John Hooper.

This is back in April. Pope John Paul's blood to go on display at Vatican.

Now, can you imagine? Why didn't they have that? I mean, I guess I didn't see the blood of Pope John Paul when

I went to the Vatican, but he had blood in him, I assume, when he drove by me in the Popemobile.

Remember that? By the way, it was a very interesting story. I want to say it was for my 15th wedding anniversary, so that was seven years ago.

I've been married to my wife now for almost 22, probably when you'll hear this show, 22 years. And by the way, marital bliss, it's the only kind of bliss that was before the fall.

Marriage was bliss then, and you could still have marriage bliss after the fall. And so we were going to Rome and going to spend our anniversary there, and we decided to do all kinds of things, mostly

Protestant things like, let's go see the prison where Paul was in Rome.

You know, it's just alleged, but still interesting. Let's go see the Ark descriptions up on the

Titus's Arch, Victory Arch. And so just a lot of things like that. And so we thought, well, we might as well go to the

Vatican as well, and the Pope was speaking that day. And so we had to get tickets to go in there.

And so we were ordering the tickets from the United States to the Vatican. And then I receive at the church, at the

Protestant church, at Bethlehem Bible Church, the two tickets from the Vatican on a really cool letterhead, really cool envelope.

And those tickets come to the church here. I thought that was very fascinating. So we went there into St.

Peter's Square and the Pope comes by in the Popemobile. And I found it fascinating because people began to stand up as groups.

So they would have people who would go on pilgrimage and there would be so -and -so parish from Indianapolis and 50 people would be there.

And then they had a song prepared to sing to the Papa, to sing to the Pope. And they would stand up and sing a praise song, but the praise song wasn't, thank you,

God, for the Pope. The praise song was, we praise you, Pope. You know, we adore you, Pope.

And it was fascinating to watch all this when John Paul was there.

I noticed at the very end, the people, the select, the extra special people got to go up and kiss his hand.

And if I, I would have been glad to meet him, John Paul II, but I would not have kissed his hand.

I would have just shook his hand. I mean, if I am a Republican and I could meet a Democratic president,

I would. If I was a Democrat and could meet a Republican president, I would. And so whether it's President Obama or President Bush or President Clinton or President Reagan, it would have been an honor to meet somebody with that position, but I will not genuflect and kiss or anything like that.

And so we were there at Rome checking this out. Well, now blood will be available, according to this article, for veneration at John Paul II's beautification, be it,

I can't say it. Beatification, beatification.

It doesn't have a U in there. That's a problem. It's B -E -A -T, like beat if occasion, beatification.

But you want to get the U sound in there. So I'm sorry that I'm not from Worcester. After being taken from the

Pontifice, he lay dying. So he had a little bloodletting when he was there, dying several years ago.

And now they're going to put that on display. And of course, it only makes sense with all the relics and everything else, but I find it very, very fascinating nonetheless.

And so today on No Compromise Radio, I ask you the question, is this a biblical thing to do? Is this a right thing to do?

If you're a Roman Catholic, would you go there? Would it help you in any way, shape, or form? Would you get some years off of purgatory if you went and looked at some of this blood?

And if you could look at it, and that would give you extra credit. Don't you think you'd want to have some works of supererogation when it comes to actually touching the blood?

Or why can't you drink the blood? Probably because it's a limited quantity, and probably because it's old.

But if you're going to do this for John Paul, I just have lots of questions for that.

And so what really is beauty? I think it's beautiful when the gospel is preached.

And people who have beautiful attributes, it's when they preach the gospel.

How about Romans 10, 14? How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

And how are they to preach unless they're sent as it is written? Here's real beauty.

This has got the U in it too. How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.

Those are beautiful people. Can you imagine the people that God has ordained sovereignly to come to you, to preach the

Bible to you? Maybe they were many people. Maybe it was just one person. And if you're a

Christian, God has brought people into your life. Oh, maybe you're the person that picked up the Gideon Bible and just read the

Bible and got saved. But most people get saved as men and women ordained by God have preached.

When I say ordained by God in a sovereign way, I'm not talking about ordination. Come and preach to you the good news.

And they're frail, and they stammer, and they don't know the Greek words all properly, but they preach to you good news.

Good news that Jesus Christ has paid it all. Good news that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Good news that God has made atonement for sinners, that God has provided for forgiveness. And then in response to that, you're to look, to believe, to follow, to trust, to give knowledge to, give assent to, give trust to.

So Pope John Paul's blood, I guess I would go see, or it'd be probably interesting to see when

I'm in West Point and you want to see Hitler's gun. And you know, that's kind of cool too. More than 50 heads of state,

John Hooper says, and several hundred thousand pilgrims are expected in Rome for Pope John Paul's beautification.

A vial, and it's interesting how they spell it in England here, P -H -I -A -L, a vial filled with blood of the late

Pope John Paul II. We'll go on display on Sunday and be available for veneration by the faithful.

Now, of course, that's not worship, is it, veneration? But what is veneration? What are they going to venerate?

Now it's interesting, the Vatican said the blood, I'm reading the article now, which had been stored in a Roman hospital, a

Rome hospital, had been kept in a liquid state by an anticoagulant that was added when it was taken from him.

So they take the blood and it's going to coagulate over time. And so I don't know if they put in coumadin, I don't know if they put in heparin,

I don't know if they put in some kind of other thing, but it is liquid. So maybe they have one of those turners, those shakers.

So it's in a vial and then every few minutes it gets turned over and then turned over and then turned over and then turned over.

More than 50 heads of state and several hundred thousand pilgrims are expected in Rome for the occasion.

And Benedict XVI is going to celebrate this at the service that day.

So I guess it's already happened. The Vatican said doctors had taken a quantity of blood from the pontiff while he lay dying.

Well, they probably killed him taking that much blood out, which had been sent in four containers to the blood transfusion center at the

Bambino Gesu Hospital in Rome. I'm not making it up. Send the,

I hear some Pope's blood, send him down to the Bambino Hospital. Sounded like John Gershner there for a second.

Two remained at the disposal of his private secretary, Stanislaw Dziedzicat, who was later made a

Cardinal and the Archbishop of Krakow. The remaining two files stayed in the hospital where they were devoutly safeguarded by the nuns.

And so can you imagine your duty as a nun is to guard these vials.

Maybe they could have probably locked them up and the nuns could have done more nunnery work. But these nuns were also nurses.

So look at all this time we put into this. If you want to be beautiful, why don't you preach the gospel? If you want to canonize people and take blood from people,

I guess it's a free country. And if you're a country in and of itself, the Vatican, you can do about whatever you want.

But these people say that they bless this blood and he's going to be raised to sainthood.

It says Pope John Paul II is to be beatified barely six years after his death.

He was fast -tracked. So we've got fast -track Kentucky Derby type of thing here. After the Vatican accepted, he was responsible for their miraculous cure of a

French nun. One miracle sufficient for this, two are required for canonization.

So one for the beautification, one for, two for canonization. I'd like to know how many times the sex scandals, how many sex scandals would it take for this not to have happened?

How many of those would it take? But that is a completely other story. I would, if I was a Roman Catholic, I would turn to Anglicanism simply for the fact of the shame of the

Roman Catholic Church as it has moved one sexual predator to another and guarded them most of the time from the law of the land.

Well, that's my opinion, no compromise radio. I'm sure you don't agree with it all the time, but that's all right.

Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. Let's talk a little bit about something else.

This one will just be brief. The Methodists are trying to revamp things. You know, of course, when the gospel isn't enough and when you don't even know the gospel and you want people to come to your dying mainstream, mainline liberal churches like many

Methodist churches, like many Lutheran churches, like many Presbyterian churches, you've got to try to spin things.

And so what are the Methodists trying to do? Their new website was called Rethink Church. Rethink Church.

Well, I guess if you'd like to rethink church, you can. It is Jesus's church, that is the problem, but if Jesus isn't in your church, then

I guess you can rethink it. Nothing about Jesus, nothing about John Wesley, but on the homepage, you can find a quote from humanist

Ralph Waldo Emerson. And if you'd like to rethink church without Jesus, you can find strategies on going green, supporting breast cancer research.

You could actually tell your story online about how you could rethink church without Jesus. That's not what it says, but in effect, that's what it is.

I think the church is about Jesus the Savior and it is his church, it is his bride.

He was sent by the Father based on an agreement in eternity past to go rescue the bride.

The Father said, these are the ones that I've chosen, now you go rescue these to bring me glory and to bring you glory.

And the Spirit of God then in time will regenerate those. And when you think of Jesus, you have to think of the church.

And if you love Jesus, in fact, you will love the church. And you can go to Matthew 16, verse 18, and I tell you,

Peter, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of, well,

ESV says hell, sadly, the gates of death shall not prevail against it.

So today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, I don't really think we need to rethink church. I think we need to go back to the pastoral epistles, go back to Acts and begin to read the

Bible and you don't have to rethink anything. You can just think. It is hard to think.

Or as one man said, it's easy to think, but it's hard to think well. And that's what's lacking many times today.

So in Mike's miscellanea, we have now vows of marriage. I was thinking about marriage vows when

Kate Middleton would not say the word obey from the

Church of England's common prayer book and how it used to be obey, but she didn't have to say it anymore because she refused to say it.

Now, I find it very fascinating when we at Bethlehem Bible Church officiate weddings. And if I say to the couple in the counseling, this is what

I'm going to use for vows. Do you have any problems with it? Sometimes there's a pretty big gulp from the woman.

I don't mean a big gulp of Diet Mountain Dew or Diet Coke. I mean a big gulp like, yow. And usually the ladies here are regenerate ladies and they realize what the scripture says and they don't think it's a domineering, a hateful thing.

They realize that men are to love them as Christ loved the church, which is a lot harder actually.

But it's their friends are going to attend, their parents. And they think

I have to say that in front of them. And so Kate Middleton, she didn't want to say it and she doesn't have to say it.

I mean, you've got all these people there for the wedding and they're in charge anyway. And so Charles, he isn't the defender of the faith anymore.

He's just the defender of faith. He changed that quite a while ago. I did love it though.

Just watching little snips of the Royal Wedding. And I loved it that there was a lot of Bible.

There wasn't how to be regenerate. You know, what is regeneration rather? You can't say how to be regenerate because God just does that on his own.

But I found it fascinating when the camera pans over to Elton John, he has to be singing songs about Jesus with his, you know, with his partner there.

Those are classic things. So lots of Jesus, lots of Bible verses, lots of beautiful songs. But when it came to the vows,

I don't think they were very good because of that one issue. Now, when we have vows in general, the latest and greatest in America is you write your own vows.

Now, that's been going on for quite some time to be creative. And I have a policy that I think

I learned from the Bailey's, I'm not sure, but I just don't let people write their own vows.

A, they don't really have time to write their vows. B, when they write their vows, they're too man -centered, too romantic.

And there's nothing wrong with romance, God created that as well. And they're also too symmetrical.

That is to say that the men and the women are exactly the same when it comes to their vows, when they make them up themselves.

Now, there is a beautiful symmetry in the relationship between men and women. In marriage, as they both worship the same

Savior, as they both bow to the same Scripture, as they are both image bearers, as they are both crucial for the home, for the children, there is a great coming together.

And this one flesh relationship that trumps every other human relationship, there is and there are symmetrical components.

But when it comes to responsibilities, when it comes to duties, when it comes to functions, husbands and wives are different.

And I don't know why that's bad. I mean, if you want to wear Calvin Klein one cologne, it actually smells pretty good.

But the whole meterosexual, the whole we are exactly equal in every way, shape and form, you have seen and you feel the effects, even though you might not be wise enough to figure it out.

Egalitarianism has come in and affected even wedding vows. The traditional marriage vows are passe and they're not any good.

Cameron Diaz, even the other day, said marriage is old fashioned, it doesn't work. And everybody wants to tell us about all the divorce rates and all the times that there are problems in a marriage.

So somehow that's not good anymore. Well, marriage, this great holy covenant ordained by God, reflecting

Christ loving the church is very, very important. And if you think about Jesus loving the church, Jesus and the church, we don't see symmetry in this.

We don't see symmetry. We see Jesus loving the church and the church responding to that love.

We see Jesus loving and cherishing and nourishing. And we see then the church submitting to and obeying.

And so nobody's bad. If you can even see submission within the Trinity in 1

Corinthians 11, submission and obedience doesn't make someone a second -class citizen unless you're a lunatic fringe feminist or an evangelical who has been influenced and duped by lunatic fringe feminists.

So I'm going to read to you the vows from traditional marriage ceremony from the 1662 Church of England Book of Common Prayer that are excellent.

These are very, very excellent. And when I say plight, it's going to mean pledge.

And when I say troth, it's going to mean a promise of faithfulness where we get the word truth from.

So listen to how great these are. This is the minister to the groom. Will thee have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holiest state of matrimony?

Will thee love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health, and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her so long as ye both shall live?

And then he answers, I will. So mark that down. Love, comfort, honor, keep.

Minister to the bride. Will thee have this man to thy wedded husband to live together after God's ordinance in the holiest state of matrimony?

This is God's ordinance, do you notice that? Will thee obey him, serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him so long as ye both shall live?

I will. Groom, I take thee to be my wedded wife to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part according to God's holy ordinance, and therefore

I plight thee to my troth. I pledge thee my promise of faithfulness.

Bride, I take thee, my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and obey till death us do part according to God's holy ordinance, and thereby

I give thee my troth. But today, nobody can say that, because obedience somehow means second -class citizen.

Isn't that silly? Isn't that silly to think that way? If you're going to say we're gonna do this after our own ordinances, then make up whatever you want.

But if you wanna say after God's holy ordinance, call me old -fashioned, but you should probably say this is what the

Bible says, so we better do what the Bible says. You either believe it or you don't. You either submit to it or you don't.

I do find this interesting. I haven't used this part, but maybe I should. And this is the groom giving the ring.

With thee, excuse me, with this ring, I thee wed, with my body

I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods, I thee endow. In the name of the

Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen. So on No Compromise Radio, I hope that your pastor has vows that are not perfectly symmetrical, that instead are biblical.

And we know that the Bible teaches in Galatians 3 .28 that men and women are equal. We're both sin bearers.

We're both sin bearers. No, that's not right. We don't wanna bear our own sin.

We both worship the sin bearer, and we are both image bearers, and we have different functions, different roles, different duties.

Husbands need respect. It doesn't say you shouldn't respect the wife, but the wives should respect her husband.

She struggles with that, actually, so she's told what to do. Husbands aren't to be embittered toward their wives because that's a common fault that husbands have.

It doesn't mean women can't be embittered to their husbands, but men struggle with it more. And so I think the

Bible in Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3 is wise. I think the Bible's good. I think it's sufficient.

I think it is something that we can trust. So No Compromise Radio, if you'd like to write me, info at No Compromise Radio, I'd love to hear from you.

We get lots of emailers, and we appreciate that. We will run, Lord willing, almost all new shows this summer.

I think we might have the Roman Catholic rerun just because that was a runaway bestseller, and we are moving towards making a decision to be on the air another year, and so we'll see how that works out, at least on podcasts and at least on some stations.

We're now broadcasting out of a Boston station and a Boston satellite station. I think it's

Boston Praise Radio, but I'll have to get more information on that soon enough. My name's Mike Abendroth, nocompromiseradio .com.

You can go to Facebook, you can go to our website, or you can go to iTunes and download nocompromiseradio .com.

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.

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