Ravi and Celebrity Christianity

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.

Why the Show Rejects Celebrity Christianity

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth and that�s a stack of papers that I�ve got in front of me here in the studio slash office slash study at Bethlehem Bible Church. Why is it called No Compromise Radio ministry?

Well, the Lord Jesus never compromised. No attributes of God were compromised at Calvary or at any time, and in light of that, we don�t want to compromise. You can write me, Mike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com.

Kind of living behind the scenes these days. I still do the show and preach. I monthly am on Stand Up for the Truth with my friend Dave in Wisconsin, but besides that, there�s not a whole lot of other stuff going on.

I don�t know why I�m breathing hard. I only was walking. I had a stress test the other day, a nuclear stress test for my heart, and they said no blockage, but something funky goes on at about 140 heartbeats per minute.

I guess I just have to keep going. So back on the bicycle trying to deal with this C67 disc problem, but we�re all getting older now, aren�t we? Well, instead of talking about 2 Peter today, I want to talk a little bit about what�s in the news.

That, I guess, will be the title today, what�s in the news. And what is in the news? It seems like, and I�m going to sneeze here in a second, it seems like there are, I think I actually find a mute button here, and I don�t know what to do.

I actually hit the mute button and sneezed. I think that�s the first time I�ve ever done that. I usually just, you know, if I cough or whatever, yawn, there�s no mute button muted, so who knows how that�ll work.

But anyway, celebrity Christianity used to be alive and well, and I think in some quarters it probably still is. But there have been enough celebrity Christians that have fallen, that have displayed characteristics that would make them not able to minister, that is, they�re not qualified.

And everywhere you go, there are stories about Ravi Zacharias and others. And so, therefore, I thought I�d talk about that a little bit. There was a post the other day that someone sent me by Michael Pullman, P-O-H-L-M-A-N, and it�s entitled �A Bag Full of Maggots.

Subtitled, �Luther Has a Word for Famous Pastors. Anyway, he, Michael, was reading a Luther biography, and by the way, I suggest you do that. If you don�t read biographies, you should. Maybe one of the best biographies ever written was on Luther.

Here I Stand by Roland Banton, and those will encourage you reading biographies. If you read something about Tyndale or Calvin or even things, you know, Calhoun on the Princeton Seminary Two Volumes, Banner of Truth, things like that will encourage you because, as we say on No Compromise Radio, it will motivate you to do for the kingdom out of gratitude.

And then it will also encourage you because these people were sinful and frail, and they struggled with things just like we did and do, and so I like that. So you ought to read a Luther bio sometime, and then you could see what was going on behind the scenes, and if anybody ever says to you, �Well, Luther hated Jews you know, then you�ll understand that�s not true.

He hated anybody that put laws on people, especially those who are religious. The Jews are converted to Christianity, he had no hate for, but anyway, that�s a different subject. Back to the bag of maggots.

And he, Luther, called himself that very thing, �a bag full of maggots. And that was in the context of people calling themselves followers of Martin Luther or Lutherans. And what do we do when Luther knew there were people who were following him?

And of course, you might say Luther was a celebrity Christian or something like that. You can deal with the merits of that on your own. Luther said that not only was he a bag full of maggots, right, he knew how sinful he was even as a Christian, but that he said, �I have not been crucified for anybody.

I�ve not been crucified for anybody. And therefore, I just want to warn you, as you listen, I know you�re probably, you know, I�m your favorite celebrity pastor and you, you know, there�s Latria and Dulia and a certain kind of respect and worship that comes along with No Compromise Radio, not.

But for those that you want to emulate because you want to imitate their godliness, great. I mean, that�s the way the Lord has ordained it. But when it comes to idolatry, when it comes to an adoration that should only be given to the Lord, I think the first commandment is something about don�t have any other gods before him.

Isn�t that right? You just want to be very careful. We are prone to worship. And we are prone to worship something or someone, and so if it�s not the right person or persons to try your god, we could be in trouble.

And this goes back quite a ways. Remember there were some divisions? In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul said, �What I mean is that each one of you says, �I follow Paul or �I follow Apollos or �I follow Cephas or �I follow Christ.

Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul And then Paul said, �And this is for you baptismal regenerationists out there that ought to repent. I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name.

I�d baptize also the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. For Christ did not send me to baptize. By the way, if you had to get saved by being baptized, he would have.

He did not send me to baptize, though, 1 Corinthians 1, 17, but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. There�s a way to talk that guts the power of the message, because it turns into the delivery, the oratory, the philosophical Greek wisdom of eloquence.

Well, you can tell that that�s a problem that�s ongoing. �Hey, I follow apostles like Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow the number one apostle on all the list, Cephas, and we want to be very careful.

Luther, I think, rightly understood that these people he called the children of Christ, they weren�t Luther�s children. Whatever influence I have, and I�ve had influence in people�s lives, I never saved them.

I never gave them spiritual gifts. I don�t sanctify them. Those are all things that the Lord does. Luther even said, �The doctrine is not mine. In other words, �Oh, Luther�s such a great teacher. Well, where did he get the teaching?

From where did he get it And it wasn�t his own mind. He didn�t come up with it. It was not like he was looking at the stars and then began to formulate astronomy and what goes around what, and this kind of human discovery.

No, for Luther, he knew it was revealed truth, and I�m sure he struggled with how popular he was, and he didn�t want people calling themselves Lutherans. Why? Because that would be something opposite, right?

They should call themselves Christians. And I don�t know, I haven�t read, if Calvin liked it, if people were called Calvinists. I�m sure he probably didn�t like that. And what happened was, in Luther�s day, of course, the celebrity pastors that are out there today, some may be very popular and famous without trying to do that, right?

I think Luther didn�t try to become famous. It just fell upon him, as it were, providentially. But there are people these days, especially with media, and I think of the Mark Driscolls of the world. And in my opinion, it wasn�t that he was such a dynamic Bible teacher.

I mean, he came across as, quote, �masculine end quote, even with a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, I guess. There was a certain attraction of plain speaking. But I think his teaching, while I don�t know how much of it he did on his own, I think he was related to docent, if I recall correctly.

In my opinion, I remember that. And so, what do you do? You just have this machine behind you with great arts, graphics, production, social media, etc. In the old days, if you were going to build a platform, it took decades, and then the Lord, hopefully, would be working in your life so that when you were super famous as some celebrity Christian at age 70, you were kind and humble and could take it.

And now, these days, it�s hard to receive worship, right? It�s better to be obscure than to have people fawn all over you, because we�re not meant to worship people, and we�re not meant to be worshipped.

And therefore, Luther called himself a bag full of maggots. Is that what you think of your favorite celebrity pastor? By the way, these days, we end up just comparing ourselves to these celebrity pastors.

If we�re a pastor, that�s what we do. �Oh, they started four years ago, and now there�s already 2 ,000 people at their church. When that�s just wrong. We have different ministries that the Lord has for us, and even with Isaiah chapter 6, his ministry was to harden people, right?

He wasn�t going to flourish. What about Jeremiah? What about John the Baptist? How many people flocked to follow them? More with John the Baptist than Isaiah and Jeremiah. But the point is simply, this is God�s kingdom, and He�s building it, and He�ll do it in His own way.

And therefore, when we compare ourselves, I�m speaking about pastors, to other pastors, that would be wrong. We can rejoice in what the Lord is doing with other pastors as they preach the Word. But also, as a congregant, would you rather listen to your pastor preach, or would you rather listen to your favorite celebrity on YouTube?

It makes it very difficult, right, if you have a pastor that doesn�t have the eloquence of certain people, or the gravity, or the theological acumen, and you�ve got just a pastor someplace in the middle of nowhere.

It becomes problematic if you view your pastor through the lens of the gifts of other people, right? The Lord sovereignly gave those gifts to other people. He didn�t give them to your pastor, but your pastor�s faithful.

He preaches Christ verse by verse, and so you ought to be very, very thankful. And I think what�s happened, even with all the COVID stuff, you have people staying at home, and instead of watching their, first of all, there are issues we could talk about there.

Do you stay home every day and not attend a worship service because you�re afraid of maybe giving it to someone that you�re taking care of, right? You�re a caregiver, or maybe your immune system is bad, or maybe you�re too old, and whatever the doctor says, there�s lots of issues with that.

And then, what do you do? You still go to the grocery store. That�s essential. You still go to your doctor�s appointments. That�s essential. Do you still go to worship services? Is that essential? I mean, we have a lot of those things to answer and think through, but what happens is, for those that stay home for whatever reason, a good-slash-legitimate reason or a bad reason, what do you do when you turn on your pastor�s preaching on a Sunday morning worship service via livestream?

And you�re like, �Well, but I�ve got my other favorite one right? And I don�t know who your favorite pastor is. I�m sure there are people that listen to the show that they love John MacArthur or that they� I don�t know.

Or do I have any John Piper fans where they pull up an old Piper sermon, or maybe you like R .C. Sproul? I particularly like to pull up R .C. Sproul messages. I probably am listening to more R .C. Sproul now that he�s dead than when he was alive, not for any reason except I just like the way he teaches and some good insight.

And so, what�s my point? My point is, we have celebrity Christians that they ought to see themselves as a bag full of maggots, and you ought to see them the same way. Now, you don�t have to call them that to their face, but if you look at Romans 7, for instance, Paul still struggles with sin.

And therefore, we don�t want to be worshiping people and hanging on every word and never questioning anything they say unless they�re the Lord Jesus. If they�re not sinless, well, we can be thankful for them, and for those of you that listen on a regular basis, I�m thankful that you listen, but I�m just a nobody.

I�d like to finish well, but this whole celebrity Christianity thing, I could tell you all kinds of stories about people who require first class, not for health reasons, who require certain restaurants when they go there, that require in the old days, I know a particular guy, he didn�t have any rights to the messages he preached at your church, right?

So if we pulled somebody to come here to preach, and then we wanted to post those messages on the website, we couldn�t do it. I mean, and again, if I�m a celebrity, I�m like a Z-list, a Z-list celebrity, if people say, �Can we post your messages online

Well, of course, I mean, yeah. Why would I say no? I would assume they�re going to fly me, I don�t have to row a canoe across the Atlantic or something to get there, but demands ahead of time and demanding $5 ,000 to come and speak or whatever, this is just all wrong.

Putting people up on pedestals, and they must know because they�re famous, I think that�s kind of a Gnostic thing, where they have the insider knowledge, since they�ve got all these followers and they�ve published all these books and they�re so smart.

Accountability, Humility, and the Dangers of Celebrity Platforms

The upside of the computer, worldwide web access is you can get good teaching. Today I was on monergism .com and pulling up some articles and looking for some J .C. Raw quotes about compromise and false teachers, because I will soon be in 2 Peter chapter 2 with the false teachers that are among us, and they deny the master who bought them.

There�s nothing wrong with that, but you can also go find everything about anyone else. You want to be careful, and maybe I could give you some hints. When people aren�t accountable or show no accountability that we can see to their local church body, i .e. the elders, then you ought to say, �Hey, what�s going on

Now I don�t listen and haven�t listened to Ravi Zacharias for a long time, but when I did listen to Ravi Zacharias, I usually heard worldview talk, philosophy talk, big picture theology talk, apologetics talk.

And I�m not saying he never opened the Bible or never taught the Bible, but I don�t remember him teaching the Bible in a way that would be expositional. And you say, �Well, he�s not a pastor. Okay, fine.

If I�m not a pastor and I go teach the Bible, I�m still going to do the same thing that I do now. If you ask me to teach on regeneration, I�ll go find John 3 or Titus chapter 3 verse 5 and work through the passage so you see it in context and then fill in some of the blanks with other passages so it�s not a rambling cross-reference going back and forth.

Accountability to the local church. Where is that? I mean, they�re accountable to their boards, but people have their wife on the board, they have their kids on the board. I mean, whatever it is. I don�t care about accountability to a board.

There�s a local church accountability. And I don�t know if this would have solved the problem or not, but I think if� I�ll use a different illustration. If you�re in a band, a Christian band, and you think, �Well, you know what?

We�re writing lyrics and we�re traveling and we�re in a Christian band. What do you think we should do I would say what you should do is go to your pastor slash elders and say, �You know, I want to make sure I run the lyrics by you guys, another set of eyes, and we�re going to go out of town for the next eight weeks on this gig.

And after three weeks, we�re going to come home and see our wives, and then we�ll go back out on the road. And what do you think of that? And would you hold us accountable Now, normally when people do that, I just say, �Well, go do what you want.

Because if you�re smart enough to think that way, �Should I run this by the elders Then I don�t want to micromanage anyone, and I don�t need to micromanage those kind of people. But if you go to the local church and say, �Well, I�d like to travel with my masseuse, and she�s not my wife, and she�s not he then that�s just� Would you allow that as an elder and as an elder board?

So, number one, make sure your favorite teachers are accountable in a local church setting. There are certain celebrities where I�m thinking, �Well, they�re pastors, so you say, �Well, I hope they�re accountable to the board.

And sometimes the pastor resigns, right, and the whole board resigns. I think, was that not true in Willow Creek? I think when the pastor, Bill Hybels, resigned, there were questions about him, if I remember correctly.

And then afterwards, they weren�t dealt with rightly, and then the whole board and all the other pastors and staff had to resign, or something like that, who knows. But the point is, you want to make sure there�s some accountability.

That doesn�t always stop sin, but that�s something that�s important. Secondly, when it comes to celebrities, I think you should be careful of anybody who�s got a ministry named after themselves. I guess there are exceptions, but you know this whole thing when I got my doctorate and running around calling people �doctor.

I will accept that when I�m teaching. I just taught a preaching class for some European students, and they call me �doctor. Okay, I accept that because it�s an academic setting, and therefore, okay, fine.

Or if I did some work at Master�s Seminary or whatever, it�s �doctor. But even when I registered for the Ligonier Conference here recently, you could say �doctor� or �Mr.� or �Ms. I didn�t put �doctor.

What do you mean �doctor I mean, would you call your ministry �Ravi Zacharias International Ministry You have a problem with that? I do. There will be no Mike Ebendroth International Ministries.

M-A-I-M. M-A-I-M. M-A-M. They�re just something wrong there. Who does that? You said, �Well, that�s the only URL they could get. Really? And by the way, people are thinking, �Well, what does Ravi Zacharias International Ministries do now

Well, they need to flush the whole thing. They need to distribute the money to the people that were hurt, and it�s time to move on. There is no legacy that�s a good one. There is no ongoing ministry.

Can you imagine going around the world? I guess like Campus Crusade, you don�t call yourself Crusade anymore because that�s wrong. The other day, I was sitting Indian style before the doctor came in to look at my knee after my ACL replacement a year ago, and I thought, �I�m not even allowed to probably say sitting Indian style because it�s so wrong.

But if you� What words can you use? Well, I think I�m going down a rabbit trail, but I just don�t think you should call yourself that name, right? It shouldn�t be whatever ministry. And those are only just two things.

I don�t know if we�re going to continue to see a lot of this because we�ve noticed there�s a divide in Christianity now, and it�s not Calvinism-Arminianism. It�s not presuppositional apologetics and rationalism or evidentialism or old-school apologetic style.

It�s interesting. The divide that I see now is it�s between critical race theory and those who are against it, right? So you�ve got people who are living in the one orb of critical race theory, and while they may have shows that say they don�t believe it, they�ve got people at their seminary who teach it, right?

And by the way, is it almohler .com? Is it something like that? I forgot if it was or not. So it�s kind of like the Ligon Duncan, Nine Marks, Dever, Southern Baptists with Mohler and others. And then you have the non-CRT people, the Grace Churchmaster Seminary folks, probably the James White, Doug Wilson, Durbin Postmill connection.

And then you�ve got the Founders Movement with Tom Askell and Vodie Bauckham, and those guys are kind of on the non-CRT. That�s kind of the divide that I see these days. And so I think this division is going to put a damper on some of the celebrity Christianity stuff, right?

T4G, the Gospel Coalition, those big entities, I think, are going to kind of struggle. And I think, in addition, you�ve got these megachurches, and some of them aren�t even meeting, right? They haven�t met for a year.

What do pastors do all day if they don�t meet for a year? That takes the majority of my time for the week, is studying and trying to craft a message from the text using exegesis and hermeneutics, and then trying to plate the message for the people that they might understand it, and they might understand it in a Christ-centered way.

Closing Warnings Against Celebrity Christianity

Well, my name�s Mike Ebenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Today we�re talking about celebrity Christianity, and you can just start calling me a bag of maggots. How�s that? Bag o� maggots. BOM, B-O-M.

A bag full of maggots. Abfom. That is why I�m not a celebrity. Well, in my own mind. Anyway, there�s more to say. You can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. You want to order Sexful Fidelity, we�ll send you things to go bump in the church, 14 bucks for free.

Just go online, nocompromiseradio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebenroth 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 bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.