Lance Roberts Interview (Part 2)

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, a ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and the theme here at No Compromise Radio is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

And I think I say regularly, but it's a good time to be reminded, that there's only one person that's never compromised.

I mean, I don't want to compromise. I know, sadly, though, that I do, and I'm tempted to do that, but I don't want to.

And to think that the Lord Jesus never compromised. He was a real man. He was a real human.

I know He was more than human, but He was a real man, and He was tempted in every kind of area, and yet never compromised.

Have you ever met a man that's never compromised in anything in your life? And that is the Lord Jesus. So we want to honor

Him and try not to compromise with doctrine or with any other area of fidelity. So today we have part two with our interview with Lance Roberts, missionary to the

Czech Republic. Lance, welcome back this week to No Compromise Radio. Thanks, it's great to be back again.

It seems like that last five minutes seem like a week, a thousand years is like a day. That's right. Lance, you've been on the mission field for 15 years now in the

Czech Republic. What's one of the most exciting things that ever happened to you as a missionary for the Lord Jesus?

Wow, that's a good question. I get paid the big bucks. I'm going to start charging $10 a download.

I could retire. I could have a jet. Yeah. Well, I guess starting our

Bible Institute, because knowing that people are going to be taught the Word of God and get into the

Word of God, but also even publishing some books, publishing this commentary that I mentioned last week, just to see the excitement of people to finally have something in their language that helps them to understand, you know,

I don't know, Ezekiel or Daniel or just things that they have no way to have access to anything like that really gets me excited.

And so we're thankful that we've been able to do some of those things. Lance, for us as Americans, you know, let's say there was, you know,

Ezekiel's wheel and the chariot scene there in chapter one. And what does that mean?

And what's this call to ministry like? And what happens on Ezekiel's birthday? If I want to study that,

I have so many resources. I mean, I have thousands of commentaries on my Logos Bible software.

I probably have, you know, maybe thousands of commentaries, you know, with in print, or I could look up anything on the internet, right?

There's so many different resources on the internet. I could just look those up. But what if I'm in the Czech Republic, and I speak

Czech, or I'm over there in Slovakia, and I speak Slovak, and I'd like to know about Ezekiel chapter one, and where would

I go? Well, we just published a few days before Christmas, the Old Testament part of the

MacArthur one volume commentary, which completed because we started with a new, we split into two volumes in Czech. We got permission from the publisher.

And so we did the New Testament first, and we just finished the Old Testament literally a month ago. And so now that's the only place that I know of that you could go to, unless you want to go get some liberal commentaries, maybe

Catholic or just some rabidly liberal stuff. Pete Now, I've had a few books that were published, and when

I get the published book in the mail, it's kind of a neat feeling, and you open it up. And I'm not saying it's like having another kid, because those four times for me were so special.

But when you got that New Testament volume, and then the Old Testament volume commentary by MacArthur in the

Czech Republic that you had a hand in getting published, how did that feel? Unreal.

I mean, I felt like I just won, I don't know, the Super Bowl or something. And of course, when

I say, what do you think, that means, what do you think? And how do you feel? That's exactly what I meant. How do you feel?

It's just so encouraging, especially Lance, you're there in the front line in the

Czech Republic, and you need tools. And of course, we know that God has equipped us with everything we need in light of 2

Timothy chapter 3, 16 and 17. But also the Bible teaches that God gifts men, gives gifts to the church in men, he equips men and he gives them wonderful gifts like a

John MacArthur, a lot of Ephesians 4. And so to have some of those tools to help people understand the

Bible are invaluable. All right. So, see, that's why I don't ask,

I shouldn't ask like yes or no questions. I have to ask for elaboration. So Lance, if I were to go to the

Czech Republic, and we took a little survey, now here in New England, 80 % of the people surveyed would say they were

Roman Catholic or brought up Roman Catholic. Now, many of them don't practice unless it was they're dying, or they need a wedding officiated.

What is the survey in the Czech Republic? I heard you talk about this in Sunday school just a little bit today.

But tell us, if you meet somebody in the Czech Republic, what's the landscape spiritually and religiously?

Well, there's different numbers out there, but most people I think would acknowledge that about 70 % of the people would say that they have no faith, which means they're atheist agnostic.

It's known by some people as the most atheistic country or one of the most atheistic countries.

And then after that, it would be largely, predominantly Roman Catholic. And I've talked to some

Czechs, different people over there, church leaders and things who would say that probably less than a quarter of a percent would be born again.

So that means 99 % of the people have never met or they don't know a believer, a born again believer.

How much would an average person on the street know about Jesus? Would they think, oh, because of Christmas, he came, he died, he was raised from the dead.

Would they know that? Well, you know, they, you know, well, when they celebrate

Christmas, they don't tell their kids that Santa Claus brings them their gifts. They tell them that the baby Jesus brings them their gifts, which is really hard to listen to.

Seriously? Yeah. And then I was at a mall last year around Christmas time and they had a little train there in a mall for kids to ride on and it was called the

Little Baby Jesus Express. I was like, what is this? You know what, Lance, there are advantages because Santa's overweight and has a hard time getting down the chimney, but little baby

Jesus, he could kind of squeeze through there, I guess. Yeah, he could fly right down. So he can bring, he can bring your gifts a little quicker maybe.

But, you know, it's interesting because we had a Christmas concert in a coffee shop over there one year and we handed out

Bibles and tracts to people and just people in there having coffee and here we come with our musicians and, you know, and atheists sitting there singing

Silent Night. Last year in our town square in a little town where we live and they had the

Catholic priest and come and give a little greeting. And of course, he doesn't say anything about the gospel, but they all sing,

I don't know, the famous Czech Christmas carol, I don't even know the name of it. And I just stand there thinking, wow, they're singing about Jesus, a bunch of atheists, but it's just holiday, it's just a little occasion to celebrate

Christmas and get gifts, but they don't know Christ, they don't worship him, and so it's just cultural.

I think America is post -Christian now, and certainly Europe is so secular and post -Christian.

Tell us, Lance, a little bit about your philosophy when it comes to evangelism. We know evangelism is, you know, proclaiming the good news.

It's a report about what God in Christ has done in history, and of course that's affected us theologically.

But tell us why friendship evangelism ultimately would fail, and I'm not against being friends with people, establishing a relationship, then preaching the gospel to them, but that's not really evangelism, that's just, you know, being a friend to people.

My point is this, Lance, if people don't know the object of their faith, how can your friendliness inform them of the personal work of Christ?

In other words, it can't, so let's go back to what we do know, and that is we have to tell people about Jesus, right?

What do you think about those things? Yeah, it's gospel proclamation. I mean, God uses the gospel to save people, and just being their friend is not enough, it's not sufficient.

And so you have to tell them of their need for a Savior. You have to tell them, well, we just started in Genesis 1 .1.

I mean, there's a Creator, He created everything good, and, you know, sin entered the world, and we just, we walk through that chronologically, basically, and show them their need for a

Savior. There's sin, why Christ came, why He had to come, if we were ever to be saved or reconciled with God.

So, you know, it's nice to be people's friend, but it's got to go beyond just the friendship.

It's got to actually get into the heart of man, which is sin and salvation.

One of the chapters in the new book that should be out later this year in 2016, I write about evangelism in the era of friendship evangelism.

You know what, Lance? As I thought about that chapter, it's easier for me to preach the gospel to people who

I don't know, who aren't my friends. It's actually a counterintuitive thing. Become friends with people, then preach the gospel to them.

Well, when I sit down on a plane, and I begin to talk to somebody, I can get to the gospel so quickly, so easily.

I don't have any of this pressure, family dynamic, or friendship dynamic, and I'm not against becoming friends with people, but you don't need to become friends with people to preach the gospel.

No, not at all. We actually do street evangelism over there. We just go cold turkey, try to talk to people.

Our youth worker, youth minister has been doing that a few times in the last six or eight months, and we've had some young kids come to our youth group.

Imagine that. You know, a lot of people are afraid to talk to people. They're afraid to go door to door.

They're afraid to do some street evangelism, but you know what? There are people out there that if you talk to them,

God will use His Word, and He'll transform lives. A lot of times, you at least, maybe you would not expect that to happen, but you know what?

God is faithful. When we preach His Word, He's faithful to save. I always remember that little track written by A .W.

Pink about evangelism, and if I remember rightly, Lance, it said, two things to remember, two goals when it comes to evangelism, and neither of those goals were the salvation of the person.

And I'm like, wait a second, isn't that the, you know, I was a new Christian, isn't that the goal? I want people saved, and of course we want people saved.

But he said, these are two things that you have to remember. Preach to the glory of God and not for saving souls, because you might water down the message.

And number two, don't forget about depravity, because the only thing that can slice through depravity is the sword of the

Spirit, and so make sure you give them the Word, because your own rationale, your own scientific explanations, your own this, that, or the other won't work.

So these people are slaves to sin. What does God use to free them from this slavery, and that is the

Word of God preached, attended to by the Spirit. Yeah, I always tell our Bible Institute students and people in our church, look, when you share your testimony, don't just tell them, you know,

I was a drunk and this, and now I'm Christian. But, you know, include Scripture, share the gospel, include the gospel in your testimony and use the

Word of God, quote the Bible, because that's what God uses to give faith, right? Romans 10 says, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the

Word of God. So that's what we have to proclaim, that must be part of our testimony. I mean, that's ultimately what

God used to save us, so why would we want to leave that out? We're talking to Lance Roberts today on No Compromise Radio.

You can write me, info at nocompromiseradio .com if you've got questions, or as I said last week, if you want to learn more about the

Czech Republic or how to support Lance and the ministry there, you can write me, info at nocompromiseradio .com,

and I will make sure Lance gets that personal note or request, or if you'd like to send him some money for the gospel ministry there.

Lance, let's talk a little bit about Jan Hus, and many people know about Martin Luther, or John Calvin, or Zwingli, or Knox, with Geneva, Wittenberg, Zurich, and Edinburgh, but not many people know about Jan Hus and the connection there in the

Czech Republic. Tell us, who is Jan Hus, and why does it matter? Okay, some people know him as John Hus, in Czech it's pronounced

Jan Hus, which means – Jan Hus. Okay. You know, Hus means goose, and so, you know, your goose is cooked, you know, and he was burned at the stake, so that's kind of where that phrase comes from.

But Jan Hus was a Catholic priest, basically, and –

Was this 1300s, 1400s? Yeah, 1300s, burned at the stake at 1415 by the

Roman Catholic Church. But he grew up in a poor home, and ended up becoming a priest, and was a very skilled orator, and so he became a teacher at Charles University, ended up becoming the rector, and ended up being the preacher of Bethlehem Chapel, which was built for the purpose of preaching.

I mean, there were churches at this time, but they wanted to build a chapel for the sole purpose of people being fed the word of God, so they called it

Bethlehem House of Bread. By the way, I pastored Bethlehem Bible Church, and for years

I hated that name, Bethlehem. And then all of a sudden, when you took me to Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, and I saw that pulpit and everything and thought about Jan Hus, I thought, you know what,

I guess Bethlehem is not too bad. So, sorry to interrupt. No, no, so Bethlehem Chapel, the

House of Bread, they said because people are going to be fed the word of God. And they would pack those people in their standing room, only 3 ,000 people, you know, and back in the 1300s, 1400s, just to hear the preaching of the word of God in their own language, because previous to Hus, basically the preaching was in the

Catholic Church at that time was in Latin, and people had no idea what was being said. And so Jan Mielicz, who was the father of Czech Reformation, influenced by Conrad Waldhauser from Vienna, they preached in the vernacular, they preached in the language of the people, and Hus put

Bethlehem Chapel on the map with his preaching. And so, because of his preaching and his preaching against the papacy and different things, during that time, his confrontation of the priests and the

Pope, there was an interdict placed on Prague. Well, an interdict meant that, you know, they can no longer perform weddings and funerals and, you know, it affected the daily lives of people when the

Pope would place an interdict over the city like that. And so, people wouldn't have to live that way,

Hus left Prague and went out in the countryside somewhere, and that's where he did a lot of his writings.

And ultimately, they wanted him to come to Constance, the Emperor promised him safe passage to come and meet there.

Well, he was deceived, once he got there, they imprisoned him, and a short time later, he was burned at the stake for his stand for the truth.

He was very well known for preaching the truth, you know, he has a famous quote about loving the truth, teaching the truth, learning the truth, defending the truth, dying for the truth, and from his famous quote is the

Czech motto, which in America is in God we trust, in Czech Republic, it's truth prevails. And so, that comes from Hus.

Lance, I find it so fascinating, ironically fascinating, that now it is, what, 600 years since he died, and tell our listeners a little bit about what the nation did in light of that 600 -year anniversary.

Well, of course, you know, 2015 was the 600th year of his burning at the stake, and a lot of different people did a lot of different things, and, you know, you get all these lectures about Hus and his theology and this and that, and so we decided, hey, we're going to take our yearly Bible conference, and we're going to have the theme this year,

Truth Prevails. And so, it was a conference focused on the truth, Steve Lawson came and preached with us, and we just wanted to highlight

Hus' stand for the truth, because it's not a popular thing today to stand for the truth. We take a lot of flack a lot of times in Czech Republic, people say, oh, you think you have the only truth.

Well, no, we think the Bible has the only truth, and we just want to proclaim what's in the Bible. And so, we just wanted to encourage people to pursue truth, which is what

Hus did. It's exactly what his quote says, you know, pursue the truth, love the truth, seek the truth, all that kind of, and other things.

And so, we just wanted to reiterate what he preached 600 years ago and call people back to that, to abandon the postmodern way of thinking that, you know, we just offer suggestions or opinions or thoughts and let everybody just dialogue together.

No, we're like, let's have a conference that focuses on the truth and calls people to pursue truth. Lance, how about the nation as a whole,

I guess, influenced by liberalism and other things and ecumenism? They probably celebrated that anniversary, but they probably switched everything around the upside down way, right?

Yeah, I mean, they certainly weren't highlighting the things that we did. I mean, they may have touched on some of those things, but actually, we took a lot of flack.

People are like, oh, why would you have Hus? You know, he was Catholic and things like that. And I said, well, look, what would you have been back then?

What kind of a stand would you have taken for the truth? When you study Hus, when you read his writings, you see that whenever he believed that the

Word of God taught something, he was willing to go to the stake for it, and he ultimately did go to the stake for it.

How many people today would be willing to go to the stake for things that they believe the scripture teaches? And so, the thing I really appreciate about Hus is when he saw that the scripture taught something, that's what he held to, and that's what he preached, even until death.

Now, I think the Lord is speaking to me right now. It sounds like him. It's maybe a little voice in my head, but it's baritone.

I think the Lord would have a baritone voice. Yes, yes, Lord. And he's telling me, let's see,

Lance, here's a word for you, Lance. Lance, I want you to write a biography on Jan Hus laced with some modern exhortations a la

Ashamed of the Gospel and the Downgrade Controversy that MacArthur wrote about Spurgeon. Yes, Lord?

Okay. I delivered the message to Lance. Well, I wrote a book on pastoral ministry that's in Czech, and actually, the second chapter gives a survey of the life of Jan Milić, Matej Zianova, and Jan Hus, Jan Hus, and basically highlighting some of the things that God used, you know, the characteristics that they demonstrate in their lives, and basically calling today's preachers to basically follow in their footsteps and to take the stand that these men did, who were unwilling to compromise and went against the grain and made people angry by the things they said because they said what the

Bible taught. And so I tried to incorporate that, at least in one chapter in the book, but Mike wants me to expand upon that.

I do. I would love that. You've got the chapter done, so now you can expand. That'd be perfect. I'd go to your house in the

Czech Republic, all kinds of Jan Hus commemorative coins and pictures and, you know, portraits and all that stuff.

It just has to be done, I think. Yeah, well, I mean, it's exciting to me. I remember when

I was in my doctoral program at Master's Seminary, we had to write a paper on a historical preacher.

It'd be seven pages. They want us to kind of give an overview. And did you pick Amy Simple McPherson?

No, actually, there was a list of about 20 preachers and Hus was on there.

I thought, well, this is an easy choice. He's Czech, I'm in the Czech Republic. Oh, that was so easy. I could have picked that for you. And so, you know, it's supposed to be seven pages, but I got to page 25 or 26 and I'm like,

I think I should stop because the professors aren't even going to accept this. Take that and that other chapter and now you're two chapters in.

There you go. We're talking to Lance Roberts today on No Compromise Radio. Lance is here in America on furlough, heading back to the

Czech Republic soon. Let's talk a little bit about Moravia. We've got about four minutes to go.

Many people want to say, oh, you know, Moravians and they're Christians and this, that and the other.

When I say the Moravians, what goes through your mind? Do you think mystic? Do you think

Christians are just an awful little bit? You live there. Tell us the right way to think about this group.

Well, when we think of Moravians, we think of the Moravian missionary movement, which was a noble thing.

You know, they took the gospel to places that didn't have the gospel. But what a lot of people don't understand is a lot of the

Moravians were very mystical. And, you know, there's still Moravian churches in America along the

East Coast. But from my experience, I'm not omnipresent, but from the ones that I've had any connection to or have studied or followed,

I would say they're pretty much liberal today. And so it's not something that we would look back to and,

I don't know, it's not something that we look back to necessarily as a model, other than that they had a missionary movement and they took the gospel to different places.

But, you know, they fled Czech Republic because of persecution. And so they were forced out.

And some of them, and then, so some of them went to England and different parts of Germany. And a lot of the

Moravians that came to America, from what I understand, came from England and they brought the gospel here.

All right. Mike Ebendroth with Lance here. We've got a few minutes to go. When I think of truth and how we get truth,

I guess there are four ways. Maybe you can come up with more, but rationalism using our mind, empiricism using science, mysticism, something from within us subjectively.

And then we have the Bible, which is outside of us. And I think that's important, Lance, because of depravity, because of the fall, because how sin taints things.

Anything that comes from within is subject to that same fall. So a fool trusts in his own heart, for instance.

A heart is deceitful. So we need to go to the sources, as they would talk about in medieval time, ad fontes.

We need to go to the Bible. And that's, I know, what your ministry is built around. And in terms of your future, when are you going to change that philosophy of ministry?

Anytime soon? The Second Coming. Yeah, that's right. See, Lance is such a good interviewee, because he doesn't say, um, and uh.

But that was his first um right there. That was, um, the Second Coming. How can our folks go to the website?

I think there's the TMAI website and then your website where the church is. Give our listeners that information.

Yeah, if you go to TMAI .org, you can click on the Czech Bible Institute. And there's a little bit of information there about our

Bible Institute. I'm not sure if there's a link to our Czech website. But in Czech Republic, our

Bible Institute has a website, CBI, which means, stands for Czech Bible Institute. CBI, K -R -O -M -E -R -I -Z dot

CZ. It's Chromie Jesus, the name of our town. So, we're going to update that to Biblitsky Institute, which means

Bible Institute dot CZ, which is maybe a little bit easier to remember. Well, you've had speakers over there that are the no -names like Abendroth, but you've also had the big names,

Steve Lawson's John Blanchard. Was Paul Washer over there as well? No, not yet.

We've had Alex Montoya there and some others. All right. Well, what I like about Lance and the ministry there that the

Lord has given him, as well as the other TMAI guys, let's build up the locals and pass on the baton.

And the sooner the Americans can get out of there, the better, don't you think? That's right. Okay. You can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

If you'd like to support Lance, pray for him. You can go to that website if you want to support him financially. I'm sure that would be wonderful as well.

You know at No Compromise Radio, I don't ask for money for me, but I'll ask on Lance's behalf because it's gospel -centered ministry.

Lance, thanks for being on No Compromise Radio. God bless you and your ministry. Thanks for having me. 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 10 .15 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.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.