Theo Friesen 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.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, my name is Mike Abendroth. We have a variety of things we do, but just let me tell you about the show first if you�re brand new.

We have a little slogan, and the slogan is �Always Biblical, Always Provocative, Always in that Order.�

So, we�re trying to get you to think biblically, think through the lens of the Bible, and that way honor the

Lord. Of course, I compromise, you compromise, but we don�t want to, so we try to point you to the one who never compromised, the

Lord Jesus Christ. Well, on Wednesdays, I like to have interviews, and today is no different.

We have a special guest, a guest in the studio who has flown over not from the motherland, but from the fatherland, and he is a

German friend of mine. He�s a pastor, and he�s one of my students. He�s graduated from the EBTC, the

European Bible Training Center. I think he probably runs it now, he�s probably the president of it. And Theo Friesen is in town.

Theo, welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. Thank you very much. Do you know what? I know you mainly preach in German.

How often do you preach in English? Well, that�s probably once a year. Okay, that�s good.

And so, how long have you been in Germany at this particular church? Give us a little bit of your background.

I want the audience to get to know you a little bit. I grew up in Germany, and in the west part of Germany, we moved with my parents to East Berlin in the �90s when the wall came down between East and West.

So, I grew up in the eastern part of Germany, and then I�m in that church since around 14 years.

That�s about how long it exists. My father planted the church as the main pastor there.

And so, Theo, your dad planted the church, and he does some of the Russian -speaking services.

And now, are you the pastor, the senior pastor of the German -speaking churches? What�s your title?

Yes, we are three elders, and I oversee the German part of the congregation.

It�s a Russian -German congregation, as you mentioned. And yeah, my dad is overseeing the

Russian part with another elder, and I oversee the German part. Well, it must be great to minister with your father.

How great is that? It�s unbelievable. It�s really great to not be only around young guys, but have real wisdom around you that keeps you on the right track.

Now, speaking of wisdom and older men, there�s a really old guy that you work with at the

EBTC, that really old kind of German Christian Andresen, right? Yeah, he�s about the age of my dad.

Well, at No Compromise Radio, we are with Bethlehem Bible Church, of course, and one of our missionaries that we support is

Christian Andresen, and so that�s the link. And Theo is in town here for a week.

I think he�s been to Raleigh and to New York and other places, but he�s going to preach here on Sunday at Bethlehem Bible Church, and so you can probably look for the

Bethlehem Bible Church iTunes feed. Can you imagine? You�re going to be on iTunes now. I am in Germany.

Oh, you are? Okay. So, tell us about the church, and I want you, Theo, to let the

Americans know what the culture of the church is in Germany. That is to say, there are a lot of people who attend churches, but they be what we call in America �mainline ,� or �liberal.�

There�s not many evangelical churches. So, what�s the overall spiritual state of the church?

I don�t mean the born -again church, but there�s just the state church in Germany. The state church in Germany you would divide into geographically because there are more churches and kind of church life in the western and southern part of Germany, but in the eastern part, there are hardly any

Christians. The east German part is the most atheistic country or place in the world.

It�s over 50 percent atheistic, so that�s the background or the situation we are in, and we are faced to.

We have a lot of people that we meet on the streets that are just hateful about asking them about God because they don�t have any idea about a

God. So, is there any � Theo, when Germans grow up now, let�s say there�s a 10 -year -old

German. He�s growing up in Germany, in Berlin. What would he know from school about God or the

Scriptures? Anything? Usually not, no. There�s no religion class in school.

There�s nothing, you know. They probably see some old churches, the church buildings,

I mean, from the state church, but that�s about it. Okay, and so when

Germans go to a state church or a country church, is there the main church?

Is it a Lutheran church, but it�s very liberal? How does that work? Yes, it�s the Lutheran and the

Catholic church. It�s both. We have both. In many cities, we have two churches, one

Catholic, one Protestant church, and a lot of people are in the church paying taxes to the church.

That�s actually what it means to be in the church, and because they pay taxes, many of them sign out of the church, so they don�t have to pay the tax anymore.

So it is not required any longer. You can opt out. You can say, �I don�t want to pay taxes any longer ,� and then you leave the church?

Yes. Okay. So you grew up in a family, and I got to stay with your parents in their basement apartment, and so I know about your brothers and sisters, and it seems like your brothers and sisters are all following the

Lord. What was it like to grow up in a church in Berlin where there are so many atheists, yet your father and mother want to follow the

Lord Jesus Christ? How did that feel, and what did you think about it? Well, I have no comparison to how it�s like to be in a different culture, but there was always around me, and I have to say, before the

Lord saved me, inside me, the double life, the life that you had on weekends, on Sundays, or Wednesday nights, whenever the church met, and then you were in school, you had the other life.

You were just surrounded by people that didn�t have any clue of God and lived like that.

So Tao, when I hear people give their testimonies, sometimes we as Christians, we like the testimonies where the man used to be working for the

KGB, and then God saved him, or a woman was a heroin addict or a prostitute, and God saved her, and I�m glad for those things because it is a miracle every time

God regenerates a human soul. But I often think to myself, it�s just as big a miracle when

God saves someone like you who�s moral, who�s civil, you know what to do, but your heart is just as black as the heroin addicts, right?

Yes. And so, to me, it�s amazing when you have a testimony,

I�m saved from a pastor�s family. I mean, I have pastor�s kids now too, and so do you. Tell me about your family.

You have a wife and three boys? Yes, that�s right. Three boys. They are seven, five, and one years, and they like soccer.

Oh, they like soccer, okay. And they�re born Christians, right, in your family? Well, not really.

You experience that. Okay, so tell us a little bit about the European Bible Training Center. I�m thankful I could be an adjunct faculty member.

Tell us what your goal is with the center, how it�s related to the church, and why it�s important to be under the church and along with the church.

It�s not just parachurch only. The Bible Training Center that we have is focused on educating and training believers in mainly preaching.

So we have students that would travel to Berlin or one of the other two locations we have in the

German -speaking countries, and they would be with us for one weekend per month.

So we will have them in our homes, that�s the discipleship part we can have with them.

They stay with us. We teach them for three years the Preacher�s Institute, and then for two years they can have biblical counseling.

And it�s very good for the students sometimes to stay for Sunday. Usually we close the classes on Saturday night, so they can go home pastoring their own churches, and they can stay for Sunday.

They see how we live out what we just taught them. They experience the worship service with us, and it�s very good for the church and the school to be together to share the facilities, the wisdoms, the strengths and weaknesses we all have.

And the church is blessed, and the Training Center is blessed to be part in each other�s lives.

And so the Training Center�s offices and classrooms are in the building, the church building.

Everything is in the church building, and we, of course, fill up the whole church building on those teaching weekends, but the rest we just use the office buildings.

Okay, and so tell us a little bit about your preaching ministry. What kind of preaching do you think is the best, and what books of the

Bible are you preaching through? Are you a topical preacher, an expositional preacher? Tell us about that.

Well, that�s probably not new in this radio show. We preach, and I�m convinced that expository preaching is the kind of preaching that we should do.

We should read the Scripture, explain the Scripture, and apply the Scripture. That's what we want to do.

That's what we do. We have several preachers in our church.

I preach every three weeks, and then there are other men and elders who are preaching, and so I�m preaching through Colossians right now.

We finished Malachi, we finished 1 John, and the other brothers, they are preaching through Genesis right now.

Okay, great. And so many of our listeners would recognize some of the folks who have come over to teach some special classes.

I know James White is coming over, teaching a class on justification. Yes. Right? Steve Lawson has been there.

Who are some of the other men that some of our listeners would recognize that have gone over to help? Yeah, several years ago,

Mark Tavar was there, then Chris Miller was just with us at Shepherds Conference, and yeah, it's just�

I think you also have, what's it called in German, the Shepherds Conference? Yes.

Herken, what's it? Herzen, what's it? How do you say it? Herzen Conference. Oh, yes.

And so it was interesting when years ago when I was asked to speak at the Shepherds Conference, I would tell my friends here in America that I was going to speak at the

German Shepherds Conference, and they thought it was a dog show. Yes, the German Shepherds Conference.

That's right. Well, you're listening to No Compromise Radio, Theo Friesen is here, pastor, and are you an instructor at the

Bible Training Center as well? What classes do you teach? I teach the

Expository Preaching class and the homiletics. Oh, nice. Okay. I'm glad you're here.

And by the way, since you're preaching for me this Sunday, the preaching professors are, you know, they must preach very well if they're the professor.

So I'm expecting a Christ -centered, wonderful message on Sunday. Yes. Yes. Okay.

Theo, tell me about your conversion. You grew up in a Christian family, dear Christian parents, I love your mom and dad.

What happened? How did the Lord work it so you realized that you personally needed to have a

Savior? Well, as I said earlier, we moved to Berlin to East Germany when the wall came down because my dad was sent out as a missionary to the

Russians that were there in the military bases from World War II.

And so they had large military bases and my dad relearned his, reactivated his

Russian and I got to be with him in many of these outreach things and we would hand out tracts with all the other people that were there.

I would be in our house where we were and in the basement, my dad would have his office.

And oftentimes, soldiers or officers would come to our house and they would just be broken and impacted by the gospel.

And many conversions got just used and did there.

These would be Russian soldiers? Russian soldiers and officers from the kind of lowest to the highest.

And I got to see them and how they changed. I got to see the whole, everything that changed in their relations to family to, of course, alcohol and drugs and everything that is, you know, in military, very prominent.

And I myself, of course, being raised in a

Christian home, knew the moral standards of God and tried to keep up to them by myself.

And this difference, you know, changing offices and not changing tail brought me to a point in my late teenage years where I just finally, after several, trying to do it on my own, just crashed before the

Lord and he saved me. Well, it's such a great time to reflect in the

Lord's goodness in the lives of his people. And so whether you're saved out of the gutter or saved in a pastor's house, the

Word of God is powerful. It works wonderfully. And tell us a little bit about gospel preaching.

Now, Tao, you teach preaching. How important it is for people to understand who

Jesus is as you preach? What I'm looking for is, let's say you're preaching through the Proverbs.

To what extent should a pastor talk about Jesus when he's preaching Proverbs, even though Jesus might be not found in every

Proverb? Oh, we know that all the

Bible points to Christ and then from Christ is pointing back to Christ.

So we preach. Every time we get up there to preach to God's people or to those who listen to us, we want to explain them the scripture and point them to the one that resurrected us, that gives us new life, and that gives us the strength and power to live according to his will.

So preaching Christ is prominent in every sermon. It's interesting,

Tao, when I think of 1 Corinthians 2, about, I've determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, even him crucified, or I have 2

Corinthians in front of me, Paul is talking about the light of the gospel, and he says, we proclaim, for what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants.

And so if you're not going to talk about Jesus, I probably would eventually talk about myself or others or politics or something like that.

Yes, or even biblical characters, you know, be like Daniel, whatever.

Yeah. Do you have that song in the Fatherland there, dare to be a Daniel, dare to make it known?

No, I don't think so. Okay. Well, that's probably actually good. Tell us about the schooling system in Germany.

I know some of our listeners are homeschoolers, no homeschooling allowed, right, in Germany? That's right.

We have no homeschooling. It's not allowed. It's kind of strictly forbidden, and you get a lot of high penalties if you do that.

We have the public school in every city, and then we have private schools that are also, some of them are

Christian. So it is allowed for Christians to have a private school with Christian moral,

Christian parts to it, but they still have to teach the government curriculum.

Okay. It's interesting to me, Tao, because I think about life, or at least I want to more as a

Christian than I do an American. I mean, I am an American, but I try to see the world through the lens of the

Bible. When I'm in Germany, I find it fascinating that the typical German would be very against the military because of what happened in the 30s and the 40s, but Christians who are there in Germany, they don't think that the military is an awful thing or an evil thing.

I mean, we all hate war. So what's your perspective on how

Germans think of war and how Christian Germans then think of war? I mean, most of the people

I'd meet over there, if I would say, my son wants to be in the Navy, they think that's somehow wrong.

Is that still what they believe there? Yes, I would think so, that most of them would agree.

And part of it is definitely history, and that we were kind of, well, we started two world wars, and war was always bad.

Then another point that we see even right now in counseling young men sometimes is that they are submitting to kind of the evil government, in a sense.

So people would know that what they have to do is more morally wrong than right, and it's a different situation today than it was in the past and in biblical times.

It's interesting, because the same thing is happening in America now, that there are many people, how can you be a chaplain, a

Christian chaplain in the U .S. military, if you have to, for instance, officiate a gay marriage or something like that?

Tell me a little bit about the communists that are in East Germany, ex -communists, you know, from the old days, and you've got a lot of Russian -speaking people, and then you've got the

Germans there. In what ways do you think this is a good time for the gospel in Germany?

I mean, it's always a good time for the gospel, but it seems like the Lord is raising up a lot of teachers and preachers, and, you know, not thousands, but many.

And so, how do you think the Lord is now working? What are the fruit, what's the fruit of the Lord's work in Germany that you can see?

I think the Lord is bringing many students to us that had a

Christian background in some way, that still experienced how Scripture is important, how

Scripture has no mistakes at all, and they want to learn the

Scripture, they are born again, but they oftentimes, in the churches, they would not get answers out of Scripture, but out of and based on traditions.

So that would not satisfy them, and they are looking for ways to study the

Scripture. And since we, from the students and the testimonies, are known as holding up sola scriptura and preaching the

Scripture and living by it, people and students, you know, are interested in the

European Bible Training Center, and they sign up for, you know, a conference, a seminar, or the first courses to study.

And maybe our listeners would be benefited to know that your EBTC is in association with TMAI and John MacArthur and the missionary agencies there at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles.

John has been there, right? John MacArthur? Yes, he has been there. Okay. Was he, was it a biblical message that he gave?

Yes. He actually, it was right after he published his book on a slave. Oh, it was?

Okay. So he preached on slaves. It was the 10th anniversary of the training center. And what's the word slave in German?

It's, well, the direct translation would be sklave, that is slave, but the biblical translations are servant, so knecht.

Okay, nice. Well, tell us how we would get access.

I think there's an English site for EBTC. What's the website? Yeah, yeah, that's www .ebtc

-online .org. Good, and you can get the English site there and, or the

German site? That's both, yeah. Now, Mark Dever has this little thing that he asked new members to give a one -minute gospel presentation.

And so, you know, they talk about their lives and growing up.

And before you know it, their time's up. They haven't even got to who the Lord is. And so we've got a couple minutes left.

And so here's what I want, Tao. Why don't you give me an English gospel presentation right around a minute, and then

I want you to do it in German, because maybe there's a listener out there and they're listening to the show and they can hear it in German.

I want to hear the words of life in German. So we've got a couple minutes to go.

Give me one minute in, let's start with English. Okay, let's start with English. We, as men and women, were given life to us by God.

He created us. He's our creator. And since he's our creator, he has a plan for us.

His plan is that we would be in his will, we would honor him, and we would worship him.

But man did not worship him, but worshiped himself in the

Garden of Eden and was disobedient to God's commandment. So the wrath of God came upon us because we were sinning against him.

And every one of us is born in Adam, so to say, and we have the wrath of God on us as we were born.

The good news, though, is that the penalty of the sin, the eternal death, someone else took on our place.

So Jesus Christ, himself being God, became man, came to earth, lived the righteous and perfect life, and died in our place for our sins, took the penalty of death, and rose again and lives in eternity.

You know, we don't have enough time for the German portion, but that is a good definition of sin, the

Savior, and the response. And so Tao Friesen, thank you for your ministry here at No Compromise Radio at Bethlehem Bible Church.

And they can get your website at ebtc -online .org.

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 bbcchurch .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.