2021 Summer of Interviews: Todd Pruitt Interview

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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

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My name is Mike Abendroth. And as you know, it's kind of potpourri here on the radio show on Mondays.

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It's one of my sermons that I've preached. I've been in the book of Hebrews, and many people know Jesus as the prophet, rightfully so, and the

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King, rightfully so. But that book is demonstrating Jesus as the

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High Priest, Hebrews 8, verse 1. Now the point in what we're saying is this. We have present in such a

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High Priest. But on other days of the week, we interview pastors and theologians, and today, a pastor, not a pastor -teacher, but a pastor -theologian.

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Is that an Ephesians 4? Todd Pruitt, welcome to the show. Thanks. It's good to be with you,

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Mike. Is your view pastor -teacher or pastor -teacher? What is your view on that? Well, good question.

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I mean, I'm happy with just the title, pastor. It fits nicely with the

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Book of Church Order for the PCA, so I'm happy with plain old pastor. Perfect. Well, Todd has been the pastor, the plain old pastor of Covenant Press since 2013, and many people know him as one of the co -hosts on Mortification of Spin with Amy and Todd.

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And Todd, I want to hear a little bit about your

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Baptist background. Come on, how'd you get to be a Baptist or Presbyterian? We're all ears.

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You know, I think I've traveled a very similar road that a lot of former Baptists, now

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Presbyterians, have traveled. And I was raised

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Southern Baptist, I was educated in Southern Baptist institutions, and very grateful for that, very grateful for the fact that I was raised hearing the

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Gospel, hearing the Gospel clearly, understanding it, and so very thankful for all of that.

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But as a youth minister, I really wanted to teach the

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Bible well, had been in seminary, graduated from seminary, and through all that time studying a lot and teaching the

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Bible every week to young people, and really began to struggle through a lot of the passages

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I was studying and desiring to teach, because they were presenting to me doctrines that I knew were, you know, quote -unquote,

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Calvinistic, and that made me very uncomfortable. Now, I'd never been, you know, I hadn't been raised in an independent, fundamentalist

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Baptist church where, you know, the pastor preaches on the evils of Calvinism every week, I mean, never heard really any references to Calvinism growing up, just enough to know that you had these, you know,

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Christians out there that believed in, you know, the doctrine of election, and that never seemed fair to me, like a lot of Southern Baptists, so I just never considered it much, except for the fact that the

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Bible kept forcing me to do something with what was clearly being presented as a

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God who was sovereign over all things. Truly sovereign, not just simply positionally sovereign, but truly, practically sovereign over all things.

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And, you know, it gets to the point where you think, well, if I can just avoid Romans 9, I'll be safe.

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But that's not the case, because we see the doctrines of grace, if you like, we see them all over Scripture.

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I mean, you know, you can't get beyond Abraham in Genesis 12, you know, before you have to start really grappling with things like the doctrine of election, and so for a period of years,

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I was just in a lot of inner turmoil and theological crisis over that. I was a brand new senior pastor of a church for the first time in my life, a

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Southern Baptist church in the Midwest, in 2000, and I stumbled across just trying to search for like -minded guys,

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Southern Baptists who were really struggling with the doctrines of grace, and at this point not struggling against them, but struggling with the fact that I was pretty convinced that they were biblical, but didn't know how weird that made me as a

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Southern Baptist, and I stumbled across, in 2000, I stumbled across Nine Marks Ministries, which was really new at that point, and that helped me immensely, and then that went from other avenues to meet other

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Southern Baptists who held to the doctrines of grace, and I thought I was safe there for a while, but at that point, then,

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I began to see other what I believed were inconsistencies in some of my theology, and from there came to embrace a full -orbed covenant theology, along with the implications that it carries, for instance, with baptism.

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And so after nine years as a pastor in my Southern Baptist church, I accepted a call to a church in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, a non -denominational church that practiced infant baptism.

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The church I left in the Midwest, the Southern Baptist Church, was incredibly kind.

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They understood my theological transitions, and they were supportive, and I left there in very, very good terms.

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Went to this non -denominational church, which allowed me to practice infant baptism, but at that point,

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I really began to grapple with Presbyterianism specifically as a form of church government.

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I had ordered a copy of the book of Church Order from the PCA, and had been studying Acts specifically, and really became convinced of Presbyterianism as the best expression of biblical church governance.

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And so, really through a good friend, he told me I needed to contact a PCA church in the

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Shenandoah Valley, that they had been looking for a pastor, and so I put in a call, and they requested information, and one thing led to another, and I've been here now for a little over six years, happily

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Presbyterian. So, you know, it went from doctrines of grace to covenant theology to those implications regarding baptism and church governance, and that's oftentimes kind of a very similar path that a lot of guys like me follow.

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Pete And other people would think it's a slippery slope. Just kidding! It is that dangerous, slippery slope, once you bite into the apple of election, and before long you're sprinkling babies.

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Joe That's right. This is a real question, Todd. When I was in seminary, nobody ever taught me how to dunk someone, or how to stand, or maybe bend your knees, or don't torque your back, or how high the water should be.

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I mean, simple things now, almost like when I teach men to preach, we sit in the front row, and I kind of go through what are the steps mentally and prayerfully before we approach the pulpit, where to put the notes, etc.

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Did they teach you in the PCA how to sprinkle a baby? I mean, the first time you did it, what were you doing?

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Todd Yeah, well, that's a good question, because I really didn't have that kind of practical, hey, let's practice on this doll for a minute or two, nothing like that.

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Although now that I think about it, that might have been helpful. But what I did have was I had observed it a number of times, and though guys have a little bit of a different method here and there, it was very often very similar.

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What is interesting, when I was in Bible college, after transferring from a large state university to a smaller

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Southern Baptist university, I remember in one pastoral ministry class, we did practice on each other, baptism by immersion, and we went to a local church and practiced on one another.

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The problem is that we were all relatively fit college students, and I didn't get to practice on any particularly, shall we say, challenging persons, although later

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I had to do that. And I remember dropping someone because they were just so enormous, and yeah, you have those interesting situations in the

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Baptistry from time to time. Pete So when you were practicing on each other, that would be anabaptism? Todd Well, that's what, you know,

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I look back on that, and of course, when you're a Baptist, you get re -baptized all the time, so you don't think about it.

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But once you become, once you embrace covenant theology, you think, okay, so, you know, is that really something that presents a problem at all?

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But you just don't think about that, so. Pete Right. Todd, tell me a little bit about your views when it comes to the kind of the culture and the tone of evangelicalism, specifically.

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You strike me as a guy who's kind and a pastoral heart, yet you, for whatever reason, intentionally or non -intentionally, lead with your chin sometimes in some debates online or over social media or the show, and I do the same thing, and I guess my question is really, we've lost this kind of, you can't have any controversy, you can't disagree with people, the tone police come out.

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Why do you think our culture is the way it is, and how do you approach it? Pete Yeah, you know, disagreement has come to, for many people, feel like a really genuine threat, unfortunately.

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And to disagree with somebody carries with it this idea that, you know, you're diminishing me as a person, when that's not the case at all.

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And you know, I think those of us that, you know, serve as pastors of churches, we care a lot about the souls of people, and so when we see error that is of a serious nature, error that will mislead people, error that will confuse people over the nature of salvation and over the nature of sanctification, it makes us kind of angry.

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Error makes us angry, and I think justifiably so. And so sometimes when folks like you and I speak into those areas of controversy, our speech is rightly reflective of a bit of passion.

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I think it would be a sad thing if we were confronting serious error, error that harmed the people of God, and we treated it as though we were speaking about a trifling matter, when in reality we're dealing with souls of men and women, we're dealing with spiritual health of men and women, and our speech and our tone ought to communicate that, lest we miscommunicate the fact that we're talking about unimportant matters.

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And honestly, the way I hear some preachers and some ministers and theologians talk about vitally important matters, if I was just to listen to the way that they talk about those things,

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I'd think that they weren't talking about anything very important at all. Now, you know, I'm not saying, and I'm sure you're not saying either, let's do everything we can to behave like horses rear -ends.

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We don't want to do that, and if somebody defended, we don't want it to be because we were acting like jerks.

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At the same time, the choice between being...there's

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a false choice that you can either be really clear and passionate, or you can be kind.

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The way we look at it is that warning people from damaging error, and in some cases damning error, warning them about it, is kind.

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It is the compassionate thing to do. It is the loving thing to do. And we're not only jealous for their well -being, but we're jealous for the glory of the

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Lord also. And when error infiltrates His Church, error that confuses people about who

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God is and what He's like, error that intrudes upon the Church that confuses people about who

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Christ is and about the nature of the salvation that He offers to sinners, we're jealous for the

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Lord's glory, because that attacks Him. That attacks His glory. And it's right that our speech about those kinds of things have a ring of passion to it.

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So, Todd, in light of that, is there anything in particular that you observe in evangelicalism at the moment that's kind of stuck in your craw, that you're passionate about, and as you see opportunities to talk about it, you in fact do?

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Yeah. Well, you know, several years back during the summer, of course, me and my cohorts on mortification of sin, along with the help of our friend

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Liam Gallagher, got into all kinds of trouble because we decided finally to weigh in publicly on the issue of the doctrine of the eternal subordination of the

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Son. And we had been talking about that for quite some time, and Carl and Amy and I are all three were friends with Liam.

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I used to fellowship with Liam fairly regularly when I lived in Philadelphia, and so the four of us have been talking about this online quite a bit for a while, until we finally decided, you know, this is an error about the doctrine of God.

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This is an error that touches on the Trinity, and so this has to do with the glory of God.

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So we're going to speak into this, and of course we got all kinds of very angry responses to that because of loyalty to the men who had been advancing that doctrine.

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That's been one recent episode, but most recently for me has been the issue and related issues in terms of human sexuality and gender, and specifically as it has come to light in the

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PCA with the Revoice Conference the last two summers and, you know, so -called

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Side B homosexuality or the gay but celibate movement, which has gained ground and it seems to have gained a footing in the

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PCA. And you know, again, that's one of those things that publicly as well as behind closed doors

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I've been speaking out on, and it gets you some attaboys from some, but it also gets you some, you know, you're the devil from others.

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And I'm okay with that. I'm willing to get punched in the face over this issue because I think if the

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PCA finally becomes a denomination that really formally, either because of what we add to our

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Constitution or because of the fact that we just ignore it or are unable to discipline it, if we become a denomination that officially really does allow for the

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Side B theology, the Revoice theology, to flourish in our denomination, then it's going to be a death blow to us.

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And so I think that that whole theology that's come out of Revoice is very damaging to people.

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I think it's creating a way station, just a temporary way station until we get to full affirmation of homosexuality, and there's plenty of denominations that have proved that to be true.

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I think the same will happen in the PCA, unless we draw a line in the sand and formally, constitutionally say, we condemn that theology, and it's not going to be welcome in our denomination.

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Todd, thanks for that answer. I want to also say thanks for the eternal subordination controversy that you brought to light, because when

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I look back to my 1 Corinthians 11 sermons, for instance, I think, you know what, I taught the wrong thing, and I know

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I'm responsible, I'm not trying to blame other people or anything like that, but I just had no idea.

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I mean, for me, it was like, Grudem, etc., and so I've had to rethink those and become much more confessional and see what the

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Church has taught during the Reformation and throughout its life. So that was helpful to me. And with the issue of sexuality and Sam Albury and Revoice and others,

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I mean, I would rather have the Churchills than the Chamberlains, and leading this, and when

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Rosaria Butterfield says that gay Christianity is a different religion, I'm thinking to myself, I'm a

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Baptist, although I'm as close to Presbyterianism as you can get, but I'm thinking, what are they doing?

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I mean, what's a Missouri Presbyterian doing? When will they do something? And all my friends are saying, we have a process, it's slow, blah blah blah, but from my perspective as a friend of Presbyterians, it's way too slow.

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There's a problem. Yeah. Yeah, it is. You know, one of the features of Presbyterianism is that it tends to be plodding, it tends to be slow, and there's a lot of strength to that, because it helps to tamp down on certain brands of entrepreneurialism that can be harmful to the

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Church, it can tamp down on certain quick emotional overreactions, so that's good.

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But Presbyterianism is only as good as our willingness to actually practice it.

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And so what that means, you mentioned the Missouri Presbytery, what that means is that there has to be brothers who are willing to file formal charges against specific individuals in the denomination in our proper

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Church courts, there has to be guys willing to do that in that Presbytery in order for us to root this out.

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And that's where oftentimes the failures happen, is because, you know, and I understand this, nobody wants to be the bad guy,

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I mean, I've been willing to be the bad guy in certain things, but I don't like it. I don't enjoy it. Nobody likes to be thought of or be called, you know, all kinds of terrible things because you're willing to say that something's wrong.

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So it's no fun, and I get it, but there's times when you have to do that. What's the worst thing you've ever been called? Oh gosh,

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I've been called a racist, because I wrote a blog post several years back confronting the errors of Michelle Higgins and Company on the

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Truths Table podcast. At that time, Michelle Higgins was one of the most influential, considered, you know, made a list of quote, among the most influential people of color within the

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PCA, and she was a Ministry Director of Music and Outreach at one of our

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PCA churches there in St. Louis. And, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with Truths Table and the kinds of things that they teach and advance on that, and so here was an influential person in our denomination that was saying really outrageous and doctrinally, not just doctrinally suspect, but doctrinally erroneous, disturbingly erroneous things, and I wrote a blog post just assuming, because it was so egregious, her errors were so egregious,

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I just thought everybody in the PCA, even the more progressive guys, would agree with me. That's how naive I was, you know, three years ago.

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And man, I got blistered over it. I got so hammered on social media.

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At one point, my youngest son was on his phone, and he looked at my Twitter feed and saw another

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PCA pastor filling up my Twitter feed with just all kinds of really, really strong accusations against me.

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And at one point, he looked at me and he said, Who's... And he said the guy's name. And I said, Oh, he's a pastor in our denomination, and he said,

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Man, he hates you. And so, you know, that was one where I really, really got hammered.

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And of course, as Michelle finally, just in recent months, has left the PCA and has become ordained and is embracing all kinds of really egregious errors, not a single one of those men has ever come back and said,

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You know what? You were wrong. You were right about that. And I'm not expecting them to. It's just not going to happen. Interviewing today,

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Todd Pruitt, Pastor Todd Pruitt, cov -press .org, if you'd like to hear some of the sermons there.

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I think that's one of the things, Todd, that I've noticed. You know, we are on social media and we have radio shows, but the bulk of our ministry, our real ministry, is just feeding the flock every week and telling them the riches of Christ Jesus.

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I tell people, if you only know me on the radio, you don't really know me, right? Exactly. We don't have too much time left.

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Just kind of a round -robin thing here at the end for just fun radio. You can give me a word answer or you can just give me less than a minute answer and we'll just kind of do one or the other.

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Westminster Philly or Westminster Escondido? A little bit of both.

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Okay. I'm going to weasel out. Okay. Sinclair Ferguson or James Boyce? Oh, man, that's totally not fair.

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Wow. Oh, just say Sinclair. He's alive. Okay. I love them both, but the

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Scottish accent wins it at the end of the day. Okay. Good. By the way, I'm not very good on my feet, but on my ordination, they asked me one final question and they said, if you could ask the

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Lord for anything to help you in your ministry, what would that be? And it popped right to my mind, a Scottish accent.

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Oh, man. No kidding. I mean, that automatically raises your salary like 20%. Wow. The Gospel Coalition or T4G?

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Well, at the end of the day, I mean, although I've been deeply disappointed by both of them, at the end of the day, I still have to go with T4G if that's the choice.

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They're kind of just, you know, in amalgamation now, it seems to me. Somebody on Twitter said I'm supposed to ask you

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Kirk or Picard. Well, I'm not a Star Trek guy, but I have to go with Kirk because that's the

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Star Trek of my childhood. Okay. Good. Let's see.

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Oh, I think that's probably all I have here. Are you writing anything these days or is there anything that you'd like to tell our listeners about that they can look forward to from Todd Pruitt?

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Yeah, I just wrote a rather lengthy article for an online theological publication.

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I won't name it yet because, I mean, although they asked me to write it, if for some reason it doesn't get published, you know,

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I don't want to embarrass them or me, but I'll be posting it if they publish it next month. But it all deals with the question, it's a response to the question, if God is love, why won't everyone be saved?

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And so they reached out to me to ask me to write a piece on that. So that'll be coming out soon. And I've got a list,

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I haven't written the actual blog for mortification of spin much at all lately, but I've got several pieces in the queue that will be coming up, everything from some stuff on anxiety to some stuff on what it means to be human from Genesis 1 and 2.

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And so I've got several things that are in the works that'll be popping up on there pretty soon. Great. Cov -press .org for the sermons.

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Did you know that Bob Inayata used to attend the church here that I pastor? Oh, really? Yeah. We love

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Bob Inayata. They walked in and I was preaching something about perseverance of the faith and Bob's background was

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Pentecostalism. And he looked at me like, who do you think you are? Exactly. Yeah.

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And then I introduced him to the doctrines of grace and the solas and the covenants and all this other stuff.

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And then now look where he is. That's Slippery Slope. I know. Exactly. He'll be Anglican before you know it.

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It just keeps going. Overshoot Presbyterianism. Todd, thanks for being on the show today.

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I really appreciate it. If the listeners want to go to the mortification of spin podcast, that's found at the alliance net .org

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forward slash M O S with Todd's friends,

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Amy and Carl. And so you can listen to their Todd. I appreciate your ministry. People can also follow you on Twitter at what is it?

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Todd Pruitt six. I think so. Okay. Somebody said, what happened to Todd Pruitt one to five, but that was another

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Twitter question. They all got, they all got dismissed. They all got kicked off Twitter. I know.

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So anyway, I appreciate you and your ministry. Thanks for taking time to come on no compromise radio. If you'd like to know more, you can also email me,

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Mike at no compromise or radio .com. Thanks Todd. Absolutely.

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No compromise radio with pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible church in West Boylston.

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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.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 15 and in the evening at six we're right on route one 10 in West Boylston.

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