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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 ministry. This is Mike Abendroth, your host. Our slogan here at No Compromise Radio is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. Actually, it's been such a long time since I've thought about the slogan.
I don't think I've mentioned it the last couple weeks. So that is our slogan, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. And that's what we try to do. Actually, I was thinking the other day that I am a compromiser.
I do compromise. I don't want to. I don't like it when I do. But I, along with everyone else, we compromise. The show is trying to promote the opposite, but we are compromisers to the nth degree. And that's why I'm glad I have a substitute.
I'm glad I have someone else's righteousness, someone who never compromised. Can you imagine? That's why this show, No Compromise, should lead us to think of the Savior often. Jesus never compromised.
He never deviated from his father's plans. He never took the shortcut. He went and set his face towards Jerusalem and did exactly what the father intended for him to do. And his father was well-pleased.
And he is the only no-compromise person. So today, I just don't even know where we're going to be led. I do have a few things in front of me. And so, from the Wall Street Journal, this is under the Department of How to Discern News, and just to make a few comments on life in general, from the Wall Street Journal, just within the last couple weeks, I think, to attract future customers, cemeteries hold parties to die for.
That's the lead story. And then it says, underneath that, graveyards plan concerts, skydiving, clowns, meet us before you need us, by Stephanie Simon. And so, here's the gist of the article. Like other retailers, like other businesses, there needs to be some cross-pollinization.
You need to have ways to increase your business. And so, if you have a coffee shop, maybe you have a band come in at night or something. You're trying to figure out, well, coffee normally for the day, but let's have bands come in at night.
We'll try to drum up some more business to try to figure out other ways to increase sales. Now, this article says, the mortuary chapel smelled of brownies. The tissues tucked discreetly at the end of each pew were being used not to dab tears, but to wipe away fried chicken crumbs.
And as the big band burst into swinging at the Savoy, two couples, one with dog in tow, jumped up to boogie in the aisles. It was just another rocking evening at Fairmount Cemetery. So, what they do is they'll say, we don't really get to use the grounds that often, and short of Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, et cetera, and once every few days, we'll actually bury someone here.
We're going to have clowns, barbecues, dances, and figure out how to get families and how to get paid parishioners into their cemetery. And it says here, the goal, to nurture warm feelings about the cemetery in hopes that folks who come to cheer skydivers today will return in more somber tomorrows.
Oh yeah, where should we go to bury our loved one? Remember those clowns, that clown show that we saw down there at the cemetery? Let's go to that one. So, that's the idea. Of course, cemetery means a sleeping place.
And we've come a long way from the 1700s in New England, where most churches would have a graveyard right behind the church, adjacent to the church. And actually, it was a very good thing, a very healthy thing.
Anne Douglas, in her doctoral dissertation at Harvard, talks about the feminization of American culture. And part of the feminization of America's culture resulted in moving cemeteries far from churches, calling them Forest Lawn, Rolling Hills, Sleepy Hollows, just nice names that kind of are associated with nice things, good thoughts, warm thoughts, soothing thoughts.
But this whole idea of walking into a church and hearing about fire and brimstone, and just walking past the gravestone of your son, our daughter, our mother, our father, our wife, our sister, our brother, our friend, our pastor, it makes you think too many thoughts about eternity, too many thoughts about heaven and hell, too many ideas about the shortness of life and how life is a vapor, futility of futilities, all's futility, everything just goes by fast, the effervescence of life, it's just gone.
And so, you had the cemeteries move farther away. Well, now, they are farther away and they're not getting much business. And so, the article goes on to say it gets them into the cemetery, but not in a scary way.
And if they have a nice experience, maybe they'll say, I want my family there, explains William Griswold, Executive Superintendent of Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut, which holds regular scavenger hunts.
Well, you can see Thanksgiving, it's not Thanksgiving, but Halloween is going to be a big day for these cemeteries because you'd have all kinds of scary, spooky, we're spooky world when we need them. I don't know where they are, but this is what's happening today.
Now, to me, I'm not afraid of cemeteries. I think it's a good idea to regularly go to cemeteries. It's not that I only want to go once in a while. On the flip side, I don't go every week to go to my mom's graveside and my father's graveside to just think and mourn or anything like that.
And when I'm in town, I sometimes will go by just to see, brush the leaves off. It's good to go to a cemetery and think about death. It's not bad to be there regularly. So those things I'm not concerned with.
Frankly, I like to take my children to cemeteries and we like to walk around and look at tombstones. The old days, you'd put Bible verses on there absent from the body, present with the Lord from 2 Corinthians, or from Philippians 1, for me to live is Christ and to die is what?
Gain. These days, and there'll be the death angels on the top of them in the old cemeteries. It's wonderful to go to New England and walk through some of those. And you could see the ages, six-year-old kids.
And then I would say to my kids who are the same age, one day that's going to be you. It's good to think about death and eternity because it makes you think about the only Savior and the only one who can forgive sins.
Actually, I'd give my kids a dollar for every grave stone they could find with a full Bible verse. Sometimes there'd be John 3 .16 or Romans 5 .8. I hope 2 Corinthians 5 .21 is put on my tombstone. But when I go to cemeteries now, it's some kind of red shellacked bee for Boston Red Sox.
Maybe there's a picture of a dog, some kind of Shetland pony. They do all kinds of things. Well, back to the point. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry, and I'm just talking about things that interest me, and I think they'll probably interest you.
Cemeteries now, who for a long time weren't used on a day-to-day basis, and now they're trying to figure out how to get people in the cemeteries. A few cemeteries have been doing such outreach for years.
Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles, according to Stephanie Simon in the Wall Street Journal, draws thousands of summertime films projected on mausoleum walls. That actually kind of sounds fun. That part I'm not complaining about.
Michigan Memorial Park in Flat Rock, Michigan has long invited disabled children to fish at the Serene Pond amid the headstones. Even there, I don't really care about that issue. It goes on to the next page, and it's got a picture of Ruby the Clown entertaining kids, and you can see some gravestones in the back, and you can also see in Atlanta Cemetery, there's kind of a band.
Well, they're called the Bow Weevils, literally, and they are at the little mausoleum, and they're playing some songs. So do I care that these places are trying to open it up and they'll have live rock and roll music?
The one in Riverside, California has In-N-Out burgers served there. The organizer says a lot of these families have parents and grandparents write, meaning future business. There's a lot of money to be made with dead bodies.
Still, there's always a tension between mourners and picnickers, says Jeff Richman, a historian at the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. In the 1850s, the cemetery had its own police force to keep the two groups apart.
Now, discretion is the watchword. If there's a funeral going on over there, the tour will come this way. So now you've got tours, and now you've got tourists, and now you've got clowns, and now you've got the Bow Weevils, and now you've got those things, and basically, the people that are going to mourn and going to bury their loved one's body are gonna find a party there.
So I think that is pretty bad. Recently, we had a sock hop at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver, but it didn't go over too well, according to the writer. That wasn't because of protests, though. Many of the cemetery's Friday Fun Night regulars are on the elderly side, and it turned out they couldn't dance much, to be honest.
I mean, who can make these things up? This is crazy. Oktoberfest with root beer. It would have to be root beer. Root beer and brats, and so on and on we go. Ken Kautman, singles group. Now, you could probably find some interesting people to date if you were single and you went to the Cemetery Fun Night.
Sadly, they all look like Marilyn Manson, and you can't figure out if it's a man or a woman, but there'd probably be lots of black makeup and spiked shoes. People tend to go to places they're familiar with.
That's why McDonald's has Happy Meals. You start out there, says Mr. Kautman. As a kid, you have a happy memory of the place, and when you're adult, you keep coming back. Standing outside the mortuary, Mr. Kautman looked at the couple strolling through the darkened graveyard to hear jazz.
Maybe this, he says, is their Happy Meal. Oh. Friends, we don't have to be afraid of death. Jesus has conquered death for us. The great enemy, death, has been conquered. When you see someone die, don't let people tell you that's a natural thing.
There's nothing natural about it at all. It's unnatural, yet God has overturned death. Jesus Christ has crushed Satan and crushed death, and we can be very, very happy now that although death is the enemy, we have victory over the enemy because of Christ Jesus' wonderful redemption, reconciliation, and propitiation.
1 Corinthians chapter 15 is true. Now, when you think of these verses, you've heard them many times, but the text says in chapter 15, verse 54, and when the perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.
Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But then we have something much better than clowns, much better than In-N-Out burgers, much better than any other kind of party you could put together.
But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. And see, because of that, it changes the way you live. What you believe determines how you behave. Your doctrine determines your duty.
And so your creed determines your conduct. Your, what's another one? Your credenda determines your agenda. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.
That's the good news. That is definitely the good news. Mike Abendroth here, No Compromise Radio Ministry. Item number two. Item number two, also from the Wall Street Journal. Also from the Wall Street Journal.
I've got an iPad now, and it's good for travel and preaching from when you're traveling, and you don't have to carry all that paper and all those commentaries. But there's something to be said for paper.
I don't know about you, but I enjoy paper. Maybe it's because I like trees that are cut down. No, that's a different subject. No, I just like paper. I can hold it. I can write on it. I can smell it. I can have it stain my fingers if I hold it wrongly.
Remember the old newspapers, you could have silly putty, and you push the silly putty down on the paper, and you would get the mirror image of what was on the paper. Well, we had some silly putty the other day, and first of all, where is a newspaper?
I can't find a newspaper to light a fire with, and I can't find a newspaper to have any silly putty used upon it. And then secondly, the ink is different. It doesn't come off as well. So I think the kids are robbed from silly putty, but most kids don't even care about silly putty.
It's probably Wii putty. You can have silly putty on the Wii game. Another Wall Street Journal article. This is August 13th, 2010. KC, my friend, slips me these pieces of paper once in a while. Bulgaria looks to John the Baptist to resurrect flagging economy.
So we've got cemeteries trying to figure out how to get more people in, and how to get more plots sold via clowns, In-N-Out burgers, et cetera. Now Bulgaria says, you know, we've got to have some increase in our gross domestic product, and we think John the Baptist could be the answer.
After all, Transylvania has Count Dracula. So how about John the Baptist? Sub line, archeological find promises fame, tourists. Questions remain over relics authenticity. Joe Parkinson writes this article.
Sozopol, Bulgaria. Archeologists and clerics here say they have unearthed bones belonging to John the Baptist, an itinerant preacher revered by Christians as the last of the Old Testament prophets. So we found some bones.
Maybe they're John the Baptist. Maybe there's no head to be found, and they can claim it for John the Baptist. Sometimes you should do a study in the relics of the Roman Catholic Church. And if you take all the relics, some studies have been done, taken some of the relics and put them together, you'd have enough for about 300 crosses that Jesus supposedly died on.
There are relics of the Virgin Mary's breast milk. There are all kinds of relics. And whether we have these things or not, our faith is placed on the word of God, placed on Christ, on the word of God.
We don't need relics. And most of these things, whether it's Noah's Ark or the body of so-and-so, it doesn't really matter, does it? Because we know what the Bible teaches. Bulgaria's government is looking to the discovery for salvation of a financial sort.
The remains, including a skull fragment, or maybe they put the head of John the Baptist with his body, and a tooth. Be careful with your tooth discoveries. We know the Nebraska man, actually, as the evolutionists loved to have Nebraska man, was eventually found out to be a pig's tooth, were uncovered last month during the excavation of a fourth-century monastery on St. Ivan Island off Bulgaria's Black Sea coast.
They were in a sealed reliquary, that's a new word for me, like cherubic, buried next to a tiny urn inscribed with St. John's name and birth date. Officials of this recession-scarred country think the purported relics will give a big boost to tourism.
So my question for you is, would you go there to look at that relic? Would you go and say, wow, I saw John the Baptist's skull fragment, therefore he must increase and I must decrease, and I'll just say what John says about Jesus.
Tens of millions of dollars have already been earmarked to prepare for an anticipated surge in visitors. I think they probably better not spend that much because I don't think the surge is going to be that good.
Actually, there's a picture here of the Greek inscription of John the Baptist's name and birth date and some kind of relics. Ooh, construction crews are enlarging the port and building a big new parking lot.
I mean, seriously, what do you think we ought to do? We're going to have a lot more people come to see John the Baptist's hairpin, and there's a couple locusts stuck inside the dental, you know, the teeth of John the Baptist.
What should we do? Let's build a bigger parking lot. Yeah, that'll get new people in. Tour guides are being rewritten, and new signs are going up to direct people to the relics. Well, I guess it was a slow news day.
This is a whole similar deal where we walk by faith, not by sight, don't we? Heaven will have no faith. We will have just sight in heaven. But for the meantime, faith is commended, and you can read Hebrews 11 for a great commendation for those people who believed but did not see.
And so why, Christian, are we so enamored with frauds and phonies like the Shroud of Turin? It is just ridiculous that we just stoop to those kind of things. Those aren't true. They're all fake, and what good do they do anyway?
We don't need them. 1 Peter 1, verse 8. And though you have not seen Jesus, you love Him. And though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him. You greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.
Now, I know Jesus isn't John the Baptist, but the same thing is true. We have this great faith. We have been given an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, and it's been reserved in heaven for us, purchased with the blood of Christ.
God has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of the bones of John the Baptist from the dead. No, from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We don't need these things. And all the CBS, A &E, Discovery Channel things on the Shroud of Turin, it's just a box office draw.
It's not really Jesus's burial cloth. It's not that at all. The article goes on to say the bones, though, make Bulgaria a member of the not so exclusive club of nations that they say are home to the pieces of John the Baptist who was beheaded by King Herod.
Ancient tradition has held that this severed head was entombed in Herod's Jerusalem palace. Over time, the body parts believed to be St. John's have spread across Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia.
A church in Calcutta claims to house a part of the satanly hand. Doesn't that strike you as just ridiculous? Orthodox Christians hold John the Baptist to, according to some accounts, baptized Jesus. That's interesting.
What account would that be? Not Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Maybe I'm wrong. There are some encouraging signs, according to the article. Milena Dimitrova, who has been selling fresh berries, figs, and jams for 20 years at a stall, says business has been so brisk she doesn't have time to go to church.
Quote, the season was awful before. This is clearly a gift from God, end quote, she says. Business is so good, it's a gift from God. I don't have time to go to church. Why do you think God buried Moses on Mount Nebo in view of the promised land?
You can read that in Deuteronomy, at the end of Deuteronomy, chapter 34, I believe. Why did God bury Moses? Well, he buried him for lots of reasons, I'm sure, but one is so the Israelites couldn't dig him up and have him be some kind of relic and march his dead body into the promised land.
This is absolutely ludicrous. Your homework, if you want to actually do some homework, is to read Hebrews chapter 11. We have faith. And actually ask yourself the question, what is faith? Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
And by the way, when it comes to faith, listen to verse two of Hebrews 11. For by it, the men of old gained approval. So we don't have to see these things. If somehow you could find part of Paul the Apostle's arm and the beard of Peter and the eyelashes of Thomas, and the list goes on and on and on, what would it matter?
For by faith, we understand the worlds were prepared by the word of God. By faith, Abel offered to God a better sacrifice. By faith, Enoch was taken up so that the world would not, so that he would not see death.
Without faith, it's impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. And the list goes on and on and on. By faith, Noah, by faith, Abraham, by faith, Sarah, by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith, Isaac, by faith, Jacob, by faith, Joseph, by faith, Moses.
And the list goes on and on. By faith, Rahab. It might give them more riches, but it doesn't help the Christian at all. So the next thing that comes down the pike, they found Noah's Ark. They found the Shroud of Turin.
They found a sandal of Jesus. Just get on to the next thing. You have the scriptures. You have the spirit. You have everything you need. You can read of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah and David and Samuel, and you'll see that these people are those who God had granted faith.
And those people then lived like they had faith in God. It determines what you'll do. And God's given us something better, hasn't he, than the bones of John the Baptist? Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio.
We just looked at a couple news items today. Get your nose in the Bible, I was gonna say get your face in the Bible, and read the book of Hebrews. You will be blessed. Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.
You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.
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.