Life Behind Bars (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ. Based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio.

Meeting Matthew Feldmeth and the Story Behind the Interview

My name is Steve Cooley. Pastor Mike is on vacation and he foolishly left me in charge. So I can pretty much do whatever I want. And today I'm especially blessed. This will air on a Tuesday. I'm especially blessed to have my good friend, Matthew Feldmuth on.

And many of you know Matthew through his books and his radio ministry. So I don't, oh, wait, he doesn't have any of those things. Matthew is a good friend of mine, a good friend that I haven't seen. How many years has it been since I've seen you, Matthew?

18. 18 years? Yeah, 18 years. So, you know, a life, a good friend whom I haven't seen for 18 years. Okay, so you might be wondering what's going on. Well, that'll become evident as we talk. I think this will be certainly a unique episode in No Compromise Radio history and maybe, you know, fairly novel in radio history because Matthew, as will become obvious, was a convict.

He was a prisoner. He was in jail. And he and I met in Los Angeles County Jail. And, you know, so some of you might be thinking, well, how do they get to be friends? Well, that's what the show is all about.

And we're going to be talking about that a little bit. But first, I want to, you know, get some background here. I want people to get to know Matthew the way I've come to know him over the years. And so I just want to ask you a series of questions if that's okay with you.

And again, you know, No Compromise Radio, the great thing about it is if we don't like what we're talking about, we can always erase it and start over. Did I actually say that? Yes, I did. Okay, so without further ado, let me, I have a series of questions I've written down and I'm going to grill you like you're being interrogated.

Are you ready? Ready. Okay. What was your life like before you started, you know, before you embarked on this little crime spree here that got you hooked up and in jail? What was your life like?

Tell us about yourself. I came from a good household and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. My dad was a blue collar worker and a union man. And we had all the essentials growing up. We went to church on Sundays and we never went without his kids.

We didn't get allowance or things like that. We did yard work and worked around the house and my dad instilled in us a good work ethic. And we went to church on Sundays.

Addiction, Family Loss, and the Descent into Crime

Okay, so not to interrupt you, but I'm going to interrupt you. So pretty normal upbringing, but I really wanted to get a little bit closer. You know, before you got involved in criminal activity, you were, were you married?

Yes. And did you have a regular job?

What kind of job did you do? I was a pipe deliverer. Okay. Okay, and then did you, did you have any kids? I had one son who had three or four of his carriages. We had a mortgage, a townhouse, two cars.

Everything was going pretty good. My wife worked, I worked, and then it was tearing her up. And me having all these miscarriages. And finally, we went to a doctor, a specialist, and he said, get her by a state control center and we could do an operation.

So we did. She got pregnant, they put her on disability, and then there was a problem with her pregnancy. And they thought that my son was going to be a dwarf. At one time, and I had been sober for a year, a little over a year, was doing good.

And then when they said he was going to be a dwarf, I kind of went off the deep end and started using just for a short period of time, but then got it together before she had the baby. And it was a complicated delivery, one week in the hospital, three days of labor.

And then after all of that, when she was supposed to go back to work three months after she delivered Jacob, she hit me with, I don't want to go back to work. I can't let somebody else raise our son. And so for me, that meant I was working six days a week, 10 hours a day.

And one day, you know, after work, I was just like, this is not fair to me. And working all of these hours, and she gets to stay home and raise our son, and I get home in time to shower, eat, go to bed, and get up and do it again.

And one day, I just drove through some little drive-through place where they have drug dealers. I bought some heroin, and I did it, and went to work the next day. I bought some, and I relapsed, and just continued down that path.

Okay, so when you say you were sober for about a year, was that from heroin as well?

Yeah, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, marijuana, methamphetamine, I used everything, everything.

So this was just kind of like, when you decided you were just gonna start using again, this was just like an escape mechanism, would you say?

Yeah, but it wasn't, you just said, like, I decided that I was gonna start using again. I didn't decide that I was gonna start using again. I just was driving down the road, and I felt that I owed myself a treat, you know?

And to escape from the traffic, the job, crying baby when I got home, everything. And so, in my mind, that was a way of going on a vacation without leaving Los Angeles.

See, I kinda snickered a little bit there, because I just thought, a treat. When I think of a treat, I'm thinking, you know, like a malt, you know, some big bowl of popcorn, or, you know, something like that, but yeah.

So just kind of take the edge off and give yourself a little reward was the idea.

Right, and one time, what my drug of choice really was was cocaine and heroin, and that's, they call it Belushi's, because John Belushi died of that. And once somebody was asked, what is a Belushi like?

What does it feel like? And this is what the description was, and I gotta admit, it was pretty close. It's like catching the winning touchdown. And that's kinda like what a good description of it. And the problem is is that eventually you come down, and if you're an addict like I am, as soon as you come down and you wake up the next day, you wanna go right back to where you left off.

Arrests, Sentencing, and the Three-Strikes Law

Okay, so what happened? I mean, I guess I'm gonna have to advance the story a little bit, but would you say that, or how did your addiction get out of control? I mean, and what did your addiction cost you eventually?

What did you wind up losing from your addiction?

Okay, well, I was able, when just doing the heroin, to maintain, go to work, shoot up before work, and then come home, and then my wife wouldn't know that I'd been using, and I looked fine. The people at the job didn't know.

And in fact, the first couple days, they said, man, your production's way up, and they were happy with me. And I thought, this is great, you know? But I just can't do this every day because I had been addicted before, and I didn't wanna get addicted, because eventually you have to use heroin to be normal, and it starts costing money.

And so, you know, I maintained for two months, going to work every day, managing that, and no one really knew. But my wife controlled all of the money and everything, and she would make my lunch, and then I never carried money on me because of my addiction.

We knew that it just removed temptation if I didn't have money. And I had a gas card, and that was it. And eventually, I started needing money to buy the drug, and so I started selling my tools, little things out of the garage every day so that she wouldn't know.

And then I just started selling more and more things, and eventually the job ended. And in the union, you go to the hall when the job ends, and they dispatch you to another job, and you drug test, like I did today, as a matter of fact, for every job that you take.

And I couldn't pass a drug test. And then, about that time, my wife started to catch me in the lies when it would be like, what happened to your chainsaw? What happened to your drill? What happened to the sander?

And, you know.

On and on and on it went. So, in the end, what did your addiction cost you, just in terms of worldly things? Worldly things?

It cost me my son, who I haven't seen now in 19 years, and it cost me my wife, who divorced me. And she divorced my family as well, and deprived my grandparents of seeing their grandson, and brother, sister-in-laws, the whole thing.

I mean, I have to say this to you, and to those who are listening. I mean, it does make me sad to listen to it again, and to think back about this, and to just have empathy for you. Well, so then, you get arrested by the sheriffs, right?

It was the sheriffs who arrested you?

The first time, it was a local police department.

Okay, so let's just kind of go a little faster here. You got arrested, how many times, in what period of time?

Oh, I got arrested three times, in little between three to four years, and the third time when I got arrested, that was it. The third time I got arrested, it was for residential burglary. The first time I got arrested, they gave me two years state prison, but I went to a prison that they have here in California that's a drug rehabilitation prison, and you complete a program in roughly a year, and they parole you with drug testing every week, and I did that, and I got out, and after that year, the day I got out, I called my ex-wife, and I asked to see my son.

It was the happiest and saddest day of my life, probably the happiest, because I was getting out of prison, and then she had remarried, I didn't know it, and she said, you can't see your son unless his dad says it's okay, and that was just like getting hit in the face with a two-by-four, and I hung up the phone, and I got in a cab after I bought a 40-ounce beer, went straight to downtown L .A., where I know that they sell drugs, and I just wanted to die.

I was doing massive amounts of drugs, hoping that I would die. The pain was so great that she had remarried, and that some guy was gonna tell me whether I couldn't or could see my son, and that was just, I just couldn't take it.

So you wound up, to just kind of go a little further here, you wound up getting your third strike. Now, did you ever do any kind of violent crime? Never. And when you got your third strike under California's three strikes and you're out law,.

What was the sentence for that? Okay, I had three counts of residential burglary, and the first time I got arrested was 94, and when I got arrested the last time, it was 97 on three counts, and the judge gave me 25 to life for the first count, 25 to life for the second count, 25 to life for the third count, and then in those other three years, I had two counts of burglary that I had done, and he gave me five years for each one of those for a total of 85 years to life.

And one, 25 to life, 15 to life, 10 to life in California is life. Once there's a life attached to it, no matter how many years, it's life. You're never getting out.

Well, most likely. Okay, so to be clear, you never did any violence, you never hurt anybody? Right, never. Okay, and did you, when you were arrested at least the third time, I think I know the answer to this, you confessed to your crimes?

Yes, I went around and told the detectives, look, you can go ahead and tell these people that you got the guy, and I pointed out all of the crimes that I committed.

Friendship in Jail and the First Conversations about Scripture

Okay, so then how did you and I first meet?

You were a deputy in L .A. County Jail, Supermax was where I was at, and you were a deputy in there, and I met you as an inmate, and I met you as an inmate, and you had trustees and people that worked, and I was hired as your trustee.

Okay, so trustee, and I was kind of, if I recall correctly, this is in, not that this will mean anything to the listening audience, but this was in 700 Building of North County Correctional Facility, also known as Supermax, right?

Right. And you being the trustee, you basically came in and cleaned up the office and did different things like that. Do you remember our first interaction? Do you remember much of anything of that?

I remember looking at, well, I remember that you were different than all the other deputies. You were older than the other deputies, and you were different in the sense that you were more mature, you had already been established.

I could tell you were a family man. Let's see, I was 37, and I summed you up to be roughly around my age at the time, and then also in the office, I saw, well, I had heard you talk about God a little bit, and then I looked and I saw some books that you had, and they were, it was like a Greek and Hebrew lexicon and things like that, and Bible commentaries, and a lot of Bible stuff.

Well, do you know what I remember? I remember you asking me a question, a Bible question, and then kind of suggesting that I was wrong. I don't remember that. So here's I want to know what that question was.

Well, I have no idea what the question was, but here's what I remember. I remember you kind of going, you know, something like, oh, no, you know, I don't think so. Whatever the question was, I gave you my answer.

You said, oh, no, that's not quite right. And you said, you know, I've got an answer in the study Bible, and you went off and you got your study Bible, and you came back into the office. Do you remember this at all?

See, so I could totally make it up and you wouldn't know the difference. So I don't, and again, I don't remember what it was, but I remember what, you know, we were disagreeing or whatever, and I said, man, that sounds like a Seventh-day Adventist study Bible or something like that.

And you go, no, this isn't a Seventh-day Adventist study Bible. Okay, you're right. And I said, well, it sure sounds like it. I said, let me see that thing. And, you know, the advantage I had, of course, was I was the police officer and you were the trustee, so I could just say, give me that thing, you know?

And so you handed it over to me and I was, you know, it took me a while because it was like way in the back or some kind of little footnote in the back that said it was, you know, approved by the Seventh-day Adventists.

And so I think I established a little credibility there.

Okay, now I'm going to say this. When you asked me that question, I didn't remember, but when you said, I'm going to go get my study Bible, okay, right away I remembered that I had a Seventh-day Adventist and it is written study Bible, okay?

And then I thought, oh, he's going to get me on this one because I did. That's what I, I remember that Bible that I had and the study notes were in the back. And, you know what? I wasn't well-versed in the Bible at that.

Conversion, Assurance, and the Work of the Holy Spirit

Well, you know, I'll give you that one. Hey, so that was the first time we met or whatever, but now tell the audience, tell our No Compromise Radio audience how the Lord saved you. When was that?

How was that? What happened? Okay, well, I would have to say that while I was in LA County jail, okay, I was fighting my case and they, you know, were basically telling me, you're never going to get out of prison.

You're going to prison and you're never going to get out. And the deal was 25 to life. And like I said, a life sentence is a life sentence. And if you take a deal, you can't appeal. So I basically was forced to take it to a jury trial.

And if you lose in a jury trial, they really give you a much more severe sentence for costing the taxpayers more money and the judge's time and all of that. And so I knew that I was pretty much never going to get out.

And while I was in the County jail, I was just thinking I'm not going to spend the rest of my life in prison with the prison gangs and the violence. And the sadness of everything and depression. And I'm just going to go to prison and I'm going to take a hot shot.

Radio listeners is a, it's when you knowingly put more heroin than your body can handle. And you kill yourself with an overdose knowingly. And that's a hot shot. And that was my plan. And then while I was there, I met you and you were working graveyard because you were going to seminary during the daytime.

And so on graveyard, they would only let really like one trustee out because middle of the night and it had to be somebody that was kind of trustworthy. And so that was me. And you used to talk to me about God and about seminary and about things like that.

And I was listening to you and I was encouraged and I started to get hope at that point. But you asked me when I got saved and I don't know when I got saved. Everybody has a different, some people remember some people it's an altar call.

Some people they just know they cried out to God. And I really don't know when I got saved, but I know when I made a point where I wanted to live and I didn't want to die. And that was when I was your trustee.

So how would you, well, go ahead and tell us now, how do you know that you're saved? How do you know that you belong to Christ?

Oh, I know I belong to Christ because the Holy Spirit indwells me. And people ask me this and sometimes I'll sit around with other Christians and I'll say, how do you know that you're saved? And okay, when we become saved and the Holy Spirit indwells in us, okay, the Holy Spirit's job is to guide us in truth and righteousness and opens our spiritual eyes to the things of the word.

But the Holy Spirit also convicts us of sin. And one of my favorite verses is Ephesians 4 .30, do not grieve the Holy Spirit in which we were sealed until the day of redemption. And one reason why I know that I am saved is because when I do things that nobody else knows about, maybe it's gossip, maybe it's a bad word, maybe it's watching something on TV that's questionable, something like that and I get convicted like when no one's around and all of a sudden, just that little voice inside of us, that's not an audible voice by the way, but that little voice inside of us has said, should you really be doing this?

Should you really watch this? Is that really something that's edifying right now? If Jesus was to bust through the clouds right now, would you really want to be doing this?

Do you think you can call that your conscience? Could you call that?

I could, I don't know. For me, conscience is, because I did a lot of drugs and did a lot of horrible things and so I don't know if I even had a conscience prior to being saved, you know? Because I could just numb my conscience with drugs and then it was open season to do whatever I want.

So conscience to me is different than it is to a lot of other people, but I know that the Holy Spirit inside of me convicts me of things and if that's a spiritual conscience, then yes, but beforehand, I can go down that road and just numb my conscience.

Okay, Matthew, let me ask you this. How do you know you're going to heaven? Well, in John 10, nine, it says, if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, that Is that Romans 10, nine? I mean, Romans 10, did I say John?

Yeah, Romans 10, nine, that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, you will be saved. Okay, but stick to that verse, but then there's other verses that accompany that and you have to, it's more than just believing, you have to have faith and I believe in this saying, it's true.

If your faith hasn't changed you, your faith hasn't saved you and I'm not a big fan of the altar call, people that go forward and say, I gave my life to Jesus, I found Jesus. Well, I say that Jesus was never lost, okay?

And Jesus, I didn't find Jesus when I got saved, Jesus found me. Jesus pulled me out of Skid Row area, allowed me to get arrested for the things that I did and Jesus didn't put me in prison either, I put myself in prison and while I was in prison, he put people such as yourself in my path, he put that Bible, whether you wanna accept it or not, the Seventh-day Adventist Bible in my hands because it was a New King James Bible.

Closing and Program Sign-Off

Okay, we're gonna have to pause here, but let me just say, this will be continued next week, so thank you for listening.

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.