Misc Topics

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.

Tuesday Guy, Show Spin-Off, and Listener Announcements

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry, introducing Steve Cooley today. Bienvenidos, mis amigos. It is great to be here, Steve. I better jack this up a little bit with some caffeine, talk a little bit more and faster and more articulately.

How do you say that, articulately? I better speak more. Okay, so since Steve is here, Steve is affectionately known as Tuesday Guy. And Steve, I've told you the story in person. Maybe I've already said it on the show.

I can't remember what I've said, but when I was in Sacramento speaking, a guy came up to me and said, are you Mike Abendroth from No Compromise Radio ministry? Yes, I am. And then what was the first thing he said after that?

You look older than you sound. Yeah, that is definitely true. He said, where's Tuesday Guy? Hey. Where is Tuesday Guy? Do you have any moniker with Tuesday Guy on it? Is there, is that your Twitter account or anything?

I did, yes, I did. The Tuesday Guy. And is it evaporated? It doesn't work anymore? Yeah, no, it's blown up. I have millions of followers. Well, see, well, you know what I was thinking? 10, I don't know.

10. Let's see, a few announcements before we get into the show, and I want to talk specifically about Tuesday Guy. You can watch the video, nocoever .com with Truman, White, Johnson, and myself. So pull that up.

You can go to Greece with us, April 17th to the 27th. Steve, do you think we're going to make it with all the Iranian wars, Iranian, Persian things? I doubt it, but sign up anyway. Okay, I'm signed up.

April 17th to 27th. You can send me a request for a brochure. I'd love to send that to you. Actually, I've been getting lots of requests. People want to go to Greece badly. Yeah, but they're mostly from Greece.

Well, that's true, too. And Crete has been added back to the tour. I kid you not. Really? Yeah, so we're going to go see some liars, gluttons, and evil beasts.

This testimony is true. Is this thing, is this available in Crete? That might be unfortunate. Well, I just can't wait to go.

Steve, when I was here two years ago, as you know, I was super sick, and a friend had said to me, listen, I know you want to go to Crete badly. I'll pay for your flight, and just fly from Athens to Crete for the day, walk around, and come back, and then you can say you've been to Crete, and I'll treat.

And I was too sick to go.

So I'm dying to go to Crete. And did you meet a lot of liars, gluttons?

Well, I would have, and I felt I was taking the Bible in context. Oh, so you didn't go at all? No, I didn't go. I was too sick. And so I wanted to go there to appoint elders in every city. Ted Bigelow style.

Fulfill the Titus mandate. Totally. Okay. Yeah, I learned a lot from that book, though. Good. I think somebody endorsed it that I know, but that's another point. Okay, so that's the other thing, and then here's the other situation we've got going on at No Compromise Radio Ministry.

Remember Happy Days, Steve, Fonzarelli, and Ritchie?

Well, who could forget that? And then the epic spinoff, Joanie and Chachi.

That was a spinoff, but was Laverne and Shirley, that was a successful spinoff.

Yes, it was. And so was, well, then Mork and Mindy might have spun off from Laverne and Shirley, or?

That's true. Give me some other shows that had spinoffs, some character that was a minor bit part character, and then the audience liked them, and then there was a spinoff.

Did Lenny and Squiggy get their own show? They did. Rhoda, from Mary Tyler Moore, she did, she had her own show.

Why did I, when you said Lenny and Squiggy, why did I think of Code Orange Revival? Why would that be? Because they fit right in. You know what, I think Lenny was the guest speaker at Code Orange Revival night 12.

He had an orange watch on, I think.

Very nice. With a little smiley face on it. I had one of those watches.

You probably have a lunch pail, probably a Lenny and Squiggy lunch pail. No, no I didn't. Okay, so here's a long introduction to what I'm going to say. No Compromised Radio Ministry is going to spin off Tuesday Guy.

Does that mean I'm getting kicked off the show? Well. That's usually what happens with a spinoff, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, you're on your own. The contract is up and we're going to have to assassinate you on the TV to get rid of your character. Oh man. No, no, so here's the scoop. For those of you that write me and say I love Tuesday Guy and all these things, I usually forward that to Steve unless I think he's getting his head too puffed up.

You know the Greek word for being puffed up is what? Food seal. There you go. And anyway, so we're going to start having a Saturday or one extra podcast per week of Steve Cooley, Tuesday Guy, alone in the studio.

Steve alone, the seventh Sola. Esteban alone. The mad ramblings of. Sola Steve. Sola Steve. Sola Steve. So if you like that idea. That's dangerous. Yeah, if you like that idea, you can just, you don't have to do anything.

It'll just be in the podcast. Probably coming up in just a few months shortly here. Steve's got to teach his IBS class, which is what?

It's on free will. It's James White versus Norm Geisler for the Free Will Championship of the World.

Now would you compel them to take that class?

I absolutely would compel them to take that class. They have no free will.

They cannot resist it. So Tuesday Guy's going to have his own show. And if you have an idea of that format of what it should be like. Right now it's still in creative think tank mode.

Sure, well my first guest though, I will announce Hotsy is going to be on. Okay, and are you going to have guests or what do you think you might do? I guess, hmm. I don't know anybody. That's the problem.

And I'm like Mike, you know, flying all over the world, meeting all these famous people. He had the, what? The president of North Korea on the show, you know?

Well, it's funny because he and I went biking and he's really a good biker. The president of North Korea? Yeah, the young guy. All right. Ooner, whatever his name is. Ooner, Oomer. Psalm 90, Steve, I was reading this morning.

The Message Bible and Why Paraphrases Are Not Enough

What, wait a minute.

Can I get a little music for a message moment? Yeah, go ahead. That's your job. I was going to sing Karma Chameleon, but I'll. Oh, nice.

Somebody wrote the other day and they said, we're just starting to listen to your show. And we noticed the intro music was Mirror in the Bathroom, English Beat. Is it okay that I know this, she said. And the answer was no.

No. You need to repeat. The message moment. We have this from Eugene Peterson. God, it seems you've been our home forever, long before the mountains were born, long before you brought earth itself to birth.

From once upon a time to kingdom come, you are God. All right, now here's when it really gets good. All we can remember is that frown on your face. Is that all we're ever going to get? We live for 70 years or so.

With luck, we might make it to 80. What do we have for it? Is that all we're ever going to get? Is a frown on your face?

Such a frowny face. Can we have a smiley face, please?

Aye, aye, aye. What would you do, Steve, if you met a brand new Christian and they started attending the church and they had a message Bible?

I would say, you know what? I would really like to give you a real Bible.

Oh, see, that's a good thing you can do. Instead of slamming them, you give them a real Bible. It's kind of a slam, though, to say.

You don't have a real Bible. No, I might just say something like, you know, that might be helpful as a paraphrase, you know what I'm saying? But I'd like to give you something that's more of a word-for-word translation, more accurate.

Yes, and then in 20 years, when you have a radio show, you can use it for fun filler.

Yes. Isn't that how you got that copy of the message? Because you never actually would buy a copy.

Yeah, you know, I don't know how I got this. I think I got this for a dollar at the CBD sale and thought I probably should have a copy of that for something. I think it was smuggled in from China. Maybe, maybe I went to a Bible study college youth group deal in Santa Cruz over the summer and they had Bibles there in case you didn't have one, which was nice.

And so I got my first copy of the NIV 2011. Not very nice. With 30 of the T NIV in it.

You know, it, yeah, it might be a little stronger than the message, but not very much.

That's right. So today at No Compromise Radio Ministry, we are going to, oh, you know what, Steve, talking about the message Bible, what would you do if John MacArthur was going to come out with a message study Bible with his study notes?

What would you say? Would you say, John, it's about time to pack it in?

Yes. I mean, it's one thing if he's going to do the NIV deal and the idea behind that is let's get the notes in the hands of as many people as possible. It's a whole different scoop if you're going to take something that has at least the NIV, let's see, how would I put it?

NIV 2011 contains some parts that partially resemble the Bible. The message, I mean, you might as well, here's what I'd rather do is coordinate the MacArthur study notes with, say, the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

That would be more useful than the message. There's probably more biblical truth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy than there is.

Well, Steve, when I grew up in the Lutheran church, they gave us our RSV upon confirmation, but then at the youth group, we would smuggle in the Good News for Modern Man deal. Nice. Yeah, and once in a while, if we were really feeling edgy, we would have the Living Bible.

You know, I used to have a Living Bible when I first got saved, or yeah, Living Bible, because, you know, sometimes during Bible study, in our pooling of ignorance, people would read the Living Bible and they'd go, that sounds pretty cool.

I don't even think I was saved when I bought a copy of the Living Bible, but I'd read it and just thought, yeah, I just thought, wow,.

It just seems to have a little more oomph. Yeah, or so when I played the tuba, it had a little more oom-pah-pah.

Okay. I mean, when you're reading the Bible, what do you want? You want the unvarnished Word of God. You don't want somebody's interpretation and like with the message, somebody's offbeat, cool, I wouldn't even call that beatnik.

I mean, it's just kind of It's the Jack Kerouac Bible.

Exactly, stream of consciousness, whatever comes to my mind when I read these verses, I'm just going to write them down.

And that's going to be my Fa, fa, fa, ta, ta, ta, ba. That's going to be my translation. Steve, I was going to do this Christian biography thing, but instead I want to just throw you a curve ball for a second.

You came out of the Mormon establishment. What are your thoughts from a Christian perspective on do we vote for Mormons? Could you vote for Mitt Romney? I mean, you could, should you? I don't mean because of political issues, but with this background, I mean, it was only 1960, wasn't it?

When people had a hard time voting for a Roman Catholic.

Voting for a Mormon President and Christian Political Judgment

Yes, it was 1960, the year of my birth.

That was the year of my birth and the year of our Lord.

Well, I read recently a good brother who said he could not vote for Mitt Romney because Mitt Romney is part of a cult. Mitt Romney believes that he could someday become a God. How can we vote for somebody like that?

And I understand that. On the other side of the coin, you have somebody who belongs to what is at best the realm of liberal Christianity, meaning not Christianity at all, but something that would like to call itself Christianity.

So, I mean, if you're voting between, if your only choices are two unbelievers, what do you do? Do you just stand down? And my answer is no, you should vote, but you should vote with biblical principles in mind.

And when I vote, here's how I'm basically gonna be thinking. Eeny, meeny. No, I'm gonna be thinking this way. Who is more likely to appoint judges to the Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v. Wade, which I believe is bad law, and immoral leads to more murder, more abortions.

So I'm gonna be looking at it from that perspective and not so much, if I have to vote for somebody that I agree with theologically 100 of the time, I'm gonna have to quit what I'm doing and run for president.

Steve, let me extrapolate a little bit further into the future. The Republicans nominate in 2020 a liberal Muslim. That is to say he's a conservative politician, but he's a liberal Muslim. Could you vote for that person?

Maybe a little bit harder, only because I have in the back of my mind, I have Islam is not, no, I have a friend that's kind of funny who is kind of a liberal Muslim. He's Canadian. And I really like the guy, really nice guy.

And somebody who, now this is gonna be kind of a paradox here. Who doesn't really take his religion all that seriously? Those are the Muslims we usually like. Yes, yeah. But to me, Islam is more than merely a religion.

It's really a political system wrapped up in a religion. These are the kind of Christians that are caricatured, meaning Christians wanna impose their moral values on other people. Well, a lot of Muslims really do.

Christians, for the most part, I mean, there are a small minority of people that are so-called reconstructionists who wanna make the 10 commandments, the law of the land, but they're far and few between.

But Islam, this is part and parcel of the religion is to make Islam the law of the land. So that would be more difficult. I think anything that kind of mainstreams Islam would be difficult for me.

All right, Steve, I was reading Christianity Today. And as you have probably seen with your own eyes, there's a recent book called A Shame No More, A Pastor's Journey Through Sexual, or Through Sex Edition, edition.

Sorry, sorry. Seriously, A Shame No More, subtitled A Pastor's Journey Through Sex Addiction. InterVarsity Press. Any thoughts about that? Any kind of thing that just comes to your mind? Do we think this pastor should still be a pastor?

Do we, do we?

Well, I mean, it's pretty hard to reconcile that with the husband of one wife, meaning his attention should be focused on his wife and not anybody else. So it's difficult to say that it's possible to be addicted to lust, addicted to sex, whatever he wants to call it.

You know, which is to say in a pattern of sin and then say, well, yeah, this guy should be a pastor. No question about it.

Well, maybe in all fairness that he wasn't a pastor and then he went through this and then now other people can learn from it. Certainly pornography is tearing apart churches and families and...

Well, and that would be a different situation. You know me. And pretty much I would say just about anything, if it occurs before you're saved, then it occurred before you're saved. If we can have a murderer be the author of much of the New Testament, then I think, you know, pretty much before Christ, anything is possible.

I think there may be exceptions to that because the problems that are created by you might be so extreme that there's really no way you could serve in full-time ministry.

Right. Steve, let's just divorce ourself from thinking about this particular book. And I'll just say that in our culture today, though, in evangelical culture, if pastors fall, or pastors are, they blow themselves out of ministry, or their wife divorces them or something like that, the Charles Stanley deal or whatever.

Congregants, they like it in the sense that, not that they rejoice with the sin or celebrate the sin or the fall, but they then feel like the pastor could identify with the people more because the people struggle, the pastor struggles.

Now he knows what it's like.

What's wrong with that kind of thinking? Well, there's a lot of things wrong with that. I mean, I just had an unbelieving friend write me and say, I think he called me something like a holy man. And after you stop sort of chuckling about that and you understand the implication of that, and that's this, that people in the pew tend to put the pastor up on a pedestal.

Well, he's above this and he's above that, and he doesn't struggle with these issues. Well, the answer is yes, he does. The question is, what does he do with those struggles? Is he never tempted? Because obviously he is, otherwise he would not be on this world.

I'm sure I could do a better job of being with the people at Bethlehem Bible Church. I try to be with people, but I'm sure I could do a better job. But what, Steve, would the people at a large church say about their pastor?

If there's five campuses and you get the video beamed in pastor that day, you don't get to see his life at all. I'm quite certain that over 15 years, anyone who has spent any time with me at all realizes that I'm a sinner saved by grace and that I don't always practice what I preach.

I mean, I'm sad that I don't. I wanna repent when I don't. But you see the shepherd, you see the people that you're with and they realize that you're just like them and I don't have to fall into immorality for them to know that.

And so what do these people do when their pastor is a video screen? They don't get to see him at all.

Well, and I think it kind of insulates them, really, the pastors a little bit from these, even if they fall, then what do they say? Well, God's used him anyway. In spite of that, why should we let him go?

I mean, look at how wonderful his ministry is. You know, he stumbled. He's just, you know, at the end of the day, he has feet of clay, but that doesn't mean we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

You know, in other words, the biblical qualifications, because if they're not gonna hold them to the biblical qualification of shepherding, then why should they hold them to other biblical qualifications too?

Well, if the qualification is fundraising, good speaker, all around good guy, longevity, friends, founding pastor, if those are the qualifications, then keep the guy. But if the qualifications are above reproach, remember the time I was cleaning John MacArthur's office and I just opened up his Bible kind of randomly because that's how I studied the Bible.

I just randomly opened up a page and I opened it up and it fell to Titus chapter one, and he only had two sections underlined, and they weren't even sections, two little phrases, above reproach. And I think later on in Titus one, it says the same thing, above reproach.

And above reproach doesn't mean sinless. That means Paul couldn't be a pastor, Timothy couldn't be a pastor, Titus couldn't be a pastor, but it means when people make accusations that they don't stick, they don't adhere to the person.

And so I just think, you know, Jim George, he came and visited Bethlehem Bible Church 15 years ago and he said something to me afterwards. He said, I like it that you stick around after service and talk to people both Sunday morning and Sunday night.

I thought, do people not do that? I guess if there's 10 ,000 people at your church, but even then you should figure out a way to mingle with the people and to talk with them because you are one of them and they need to see you.

They need to see you correct your kids and they need to see you apologize to your wife and the list goes on.

Sure, now you can just do video chat, you know.

Well, now basically what happens because of the radio show fame and everything else, I just preach and then I have Steve close in prayer and as he's closing in prayer, I sneak out to the back. Actually, the ushers have the car, they wash it during the service, it's running, they filled up the car with gas, it's backed up to the right spot and I just slip myself in.

Steve, these days they put that little red rug out all the way so I don't even have to get my shoes dusty.

And then I just drive off. People don't know as we've squirreled away some money over the last few years. Squirreled. In the budget, so we have a little secret exit so that he can get out and nobody can even see the car leave, they don't even know.

Yes, it's kind of, it reminded me of the time, Steve, when I saw that special escape route from the Mamertine prison in Rome.

Yeah, it just kind of gives the illusion that Mike's here and that he's gone, you know, it's just poof.

Free Will, Regeneration, and the IBS Class

Steve, tell us about the IBS class, I wanna make sure people can sign up for that and attend.

Well, we're gonna be reading through Chosen But Free by Norman Geisler and then we're going to be reading The Potter's Freedom by James White and comparing and contrasting the way these men handled the Bible, the way they treat things logically or illogically and trying to sort out the issue of, do we have a free will?

And the key issue is when it comes to salvation, it really is, does regeneration precede faith or does faith precede regeneration? In other words, do we believe on our own and then God on that basis regenerates us?

We believe in Jesus Christ and then he grants us regeneration. Did God choose from eternity past to save us for no other reason than his own glory and the compact of love really between the Trinity or did he choose on the basis of foreseen faith?

In other words, knowing that we would believe and then choosing us on the basis of his perfect knowledge. And those are the issues.

Steve, I was thinking about 2 Thessalonians, now I've got to try to find the verse so I don't look stupid and I'm looking stupid, right?

Well, so as I was thinking about the class, you know, I would just say both of these men, I wouldn't want to be either locked in a room and having to debate James White or Norm Geisler. They're both super erudite, knowledgeable scholars.

I mean, they really are scholars and Norm Geisler has done some formidable work with regard to the Bible and just a very smart man, very capable of defending his position in spite of how the book's going so far.

I think most people would lose a debate with Norm Geisler but I don't think James White would.

No, I don't think he would either. Well, in fact, when you read the two books, you'll kind of come to that conclusion.

Now, for those that can't come here and take the class in person and see Steve live, they can listen to it online eventually, can't they?

Yes, Lord willing, we're going to get those online within a few days of actually having the classes. And the syllabus will be online.

I'll put the quizzes online. Everything will be online. Okay, and what about this fall for Sunday school? What are you teaching in case people want to know? Since today's basically, I think I'm going to call today's show Tuesday Guy.

Tuesday Guy.

Well, my intention right now, unless I come up with something better, is to continue my series on becoming better theologians where we really are kind of going through a systematic theology and exposing folks to all kinds of things that they've probably never heard of, but trying to make it accessible so that everybody can understand what we're talking about.

All right, well, today you've been listening to Mike and Steve on No Compromise Radio. Talk about a whole potpourri of things. I've never called it potpourri because I don't know how to spell potpourri.

Oh, well, I'll look it up for you. Okay, sounds good. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com and stay tuned for that Saturday edition. Woo, the Tuesday Guy.

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.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.