Wes Jaminson Interview (Part 1)

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, ìBut we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour ,î 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 isnít for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as weíre called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Hereís our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Reconnecting with Wes Jamieson and His Background

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I like to have guests on when I can, and sometimes even in-studio guests, and I have not had this guest on since, I think, maybe 2010 because our ratings were so bad at that episode, I didnít want to have him back on the radio.

Wes Jamieson, welcome back to No Compromise Radio. Thank you, Mike.

Itís great to be here. I hope to kill your ratings once again.

Now, I just have a doctorate of ministry. You have a real doctorate, donít you, a Ph .D.? But itís not in theology. No.

Itís a long story, yes. I have a Ph .D., dual major Ph .D., actually, and Iím almost finished on a second one.

Okay. Okay. Whatís your dissertation, your first one?

My first dissertation was on the ability to mobilize people in the mass movements and using persuasive communication to get them to do the things you want them to do. Thatís very interesting. And the second Ph .D. dissertation is, once again, on persuasive communications.

Okay. Do you have any hints for me in my radio show on how to be more persuasive in my communications? Yes, but none of them biblical. Okay. So, Wes, you and I met for the very first time in this very room probably 20 years ago or so.

Twenty-five. Oh, seriously? Mm-hmm. Okay. And you came to town, and you were a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, WPI, they call it here. And you were looking for a church, and we talked some, and then you became a member, a deacon, and then five years after that, I believe, you moved to, I think, Iowa.

Is that true?

Yes. As a matter of fact, I came here during my interview process because our criteria at that point was, before you accept a job, there has to be a good church in the area.

I wish more people would do that, by the way.

So we had a number of job offers, and so whenever I would visit those towns, I would visit a church or churches to find out, was there a church we could go to? So I walked in, and you had a picture of Jonathan Edwards on your wall, and you asked me some very direct questions, and I figured this was the place for us.

And then relatively early on, in our first couple of times we went to church here, we realized this was the place because of just the preaching and the structure of the place.

Well, and since I have taken that picture of Jonathan Edwards down, because I don't really care for Edwards that much anymore, and so too bad, at least that drew you in. And then you thought, you know, Mike reflects some of Edwards' dour, sour, staid...

Mike, you've never been dour or sour, but semper reformanda. We're always reforming. That's right. That's right. And as God polishes us, he teaches us things through both theology and experience to make us wise.

Conversion, Providence, and the Lord's Leading

Wes, I think 10 years ago, you told us the story, but would you mind telling our listeners the story about how the Lord used your attempt to do CPR on someone to get your attention and then eventually draw you to himself?

Yeah, it was a... It's in retrospect always, when you look back, you can see the Lord's hand. I was not a believer. I was not raised in a Christian family, so to speak, and was living life YOLO. You only live once and then you get annihilated.

So eat, drink, for tomorrow we die. I think that's... Is that a poem somewhere? Where is that? Did Tennyson say that? Something like that. So I was living with my ex-fraternity roommate who was an undercover narcotics agent for the state of Florida on a condo on Miami Beach in the early 1980s, in the age of the cocaine cowboys and all that, just living my life and living it up.

And I was working for a corporation called Publix Supermarkets. I had their account and I would visit all the Publix stores.

You can get sushi there for $5 on Wednesday. Do you dare do it? Yes.

It's actually outstanding. The really good Publix stores have their own sushi chef. Oh, nice. Yeah. They don't... It's not like a 7-Eleven where they buy it somewhere else, but... So I would visit the stores and see all the management and give them management tips and things like that.

And I was in a particular store in Broward County, which is Fort Lauderdale, and I heard a bunch of screaming back in the meat department. And as you know, when you walk back in the back of the store where the meat cases are, there's a hard floor.

It's terrazzo, almost like concrete. And a guy had fallen and hit his head on the floor out in front of the meat case and was in convulsions and was not breathing. And I went up to give him first aid and he had bit his tongue and was choking to death, from what I surmised, on his blood and saliva.

But he wasn't breathing. So I had the girls from the deli get a big deli spoon. I jammed it through his teeth to pry his mouth open and then did a mouth sweep to get his tongue out and was going to do mouth to mouth.

And I was getting ready to get... I was almost down to his lips and he began sputtering and coughing. And as you can imagine, it was like Old Faithful erupting. So I had his blood and saliva all over me and everyone's clapping, I'm a hero.

And then the sheriff's department paramedics come and they order the store closed immediately. Remember, this is the early 80s. They cordoned off the store and I'm kind of thinking why it turns out that the person was a late stage AIDS sufferer and was probably weeks away from death.

I didn't notice it. I was focused on trying to save the guy and I had his blood and saliva all over me, blood all over the floor. So they rushed me back in the back of the meat department, poured hydrogen peroxide all over me, rushed me to the hospital.

It was like the Andromeda strain. They put me in this room and shot me with all kinds of chemicals. And I thought it was a death sentence. And I thought, gosh, did I get his blood in my eyes or anything?

Long story short is they weren't really sure back then, but they knew it was a death sentence. That was the first time in my life, Mike, was I realized I'm going to die. And that was the first step where I realized I always thought I was a good guy that did bad things, but I realized I was a bad guy that did very few good things and this is it, I'm going to die.

But after years and years of testing, I came out negative. And so the grace of God preserved me.

And the Lord used that obviously to think about life and death and sin and all that. And then how many years or months after that did you get saved?

Well, remembering the Mike Gaben Duroth of 25 years ago, there was no, I was saved in eternity's past, but when did I get rejuvenated?

When did you get converted? When did you respond with faith and repentance?

Thank you for the listeners out there. That would have been in 2000, excuse me, 1992. So it would have been seven years later. As you know, the story is always the same. I don't even have to give you the details.

When you are his, he orchestrates events and people in your life to break you. And at that moment, upon breaking, you come to realize there is a holy God. I'm not him. I'm doomed. What is the way? So I had been convicted and I was at the bottom.

And then lo and behold, in a graduate statistics class, I had a math, these are all PhD students, math PhD student, engineering, chemistry, and physics surrounding me who are all Christians. And at exactly that moment, they began witnessing to me.

And I was blessed in that none of them were Arminian. There was no make a decision for Jesus. There was no, it was every question I had, they would patiently and lovingly take me to the scriptures. And interestingly, for those of you out there that are ever dealing with somebody who is puffed up in their knowledge, they had me go read the book of Ecclesiastes, it's the first book of the Bible I had read.

And I'm thinking, wow, this guy knows something about life. After that, they took me to the book of John.

Well, you mentioned it earlier, Wes, when you think of providence, the way to read providence is in a backward fashion, right? We say, well, guide us in the future, Lord, and I see a sign and are you leading me this way, open door, closed door?

Well, it's hard to read future providence, but when you look backwardly, you see the Lord's hand in all these things.

I like to say, yeah, I agree completely. I like to say, forward principially, backward providentially. As you move forward, use principles from the Bible to make your decisions. And then when you look back, you'll see the providence operating through those decisions to bring you to where you need to be.

And sometimes the answer is no, right? Sometimes the answers go this way, long way. One of the things I've noticed about Jesus's life, I mean, I've got deadlines and I need to be in a hurry and I've got a schedule and I've got other things to do.

And if you're interrupted by things, you think, oh, it's an interruption, but that's not the way the Lord ever dealt with it. Here's this woman seemingly interrupting him. He's got to go raise somebody from the dead, but he's all there, right?

He's with the lady and he's ministering to her and I could learn a thing or two from the Lord.

I think we all can and the thing is, he's loving enough to give us the time to learn.

Conspiracy Thinking, Eschatology, and Human Desire for Control

Amen. So Wes, last time I think you were on the show, we talked a little bit about animal rights and I think you've done some work for certain companies with chickens and all that other stuff. What's on your mind these days?

Anything you want to particularly talk about today?

Last time we talked, my research had been for years and years on animal rights activists actually. And since that time, there's nothing more to say about them. You know, people know how they operate and why they operate.

I've been very interested in conspiracy theories and what emerged out of this was, as you know, Mike, I was a professor for 32 years. Listening to my students increasingly use conspiracy theories that were completely groundless but made perfect sense to explain complexity in the world, to explain the 2000 election and in particularly the last two elections, I caught my students using conspiracy theories.

Many of them, now these are college students talking about QAnon, talking about the deep state, the great reset. And I began becoming very interested, so I did a lot of research over the last several years among Christians and studying Muslims on particularly religious adherence in a reliance upon conspiracy theories to explain things.

And what's the tie in between, let's say a Christian and a Muslim that might make them have similar worldviews? Is it monotheism? Is it there's going to be sin judged one day? Absolute truth?

I don't know. Is there a connection? Yes, there is, because they have a comprehensive worldview that there is, they've been predisposed to believe in a hidden hand out, the supernatural hidden hand outside of our reality that's controlling things.

So they're like a ready breeding ground for conspiracy theories because of the sovereignty of Allah, the sovereignty of Yahweh. They also tend to be uncomfortable with ambiguity and they're very prone to what I would call magical thinking or the idea that deus ex machina, things you can't explain must be God.

So interestingly, people who have a really well-developed eschatology, particularly premillennial people, much more so than amillennial, premillennial people, they go looking for signs of the rapture, even though they're warned not to.

And they see it. If you, as you know, Mike, if you go looking for something, you'll find it. And so they're predisposed to things like hidden hands, Ephesians, I think it's 2 .2, the prince of the power of the air.

You're going to preach on Ephesians six about spiritual domain. They already realize their spirits. There's already thinking in terms of devil and Satan controlling the world. They already are looking for signs of the end times and then they find them and they're predisposed to want to find explanation of things they don't understand.

And that's also true in a Muslim faith.

Wes, as you're talking about that, it made me think of S. Lewis Johnson, one of my favorite theologians that's with the Lord now. He would talk about reading the newspaper. Remember newspapers? I'm trying to think.

You mean the ones we used to hold? The ones we used to say, dad, could I have the newspaper when you're done? Because I want to put the silly putty on there to get the little image. Yeah.

Oh, I remember now. It's the thing you rolled up and hit your dog with.

And he would say people read, Christians read all too often the newspaper with this sign seeking and he called them future snoopers. And so he was trying to, they're trying to snoop about the future with signs from the newspaper based on historical events, instead of just resting in the promises of God that the Lord's return is imminent.

Yes, there's some general things about wars and rumors of wars and other things, but we're not to look at what happened with George Shultz in the White House as a sign that Ronald Reagan did. X, Y, Z.

I agree. I could not agree more.

That's the future snooper. It's in the human condition. We walk by sight and not by faith. And so we go looking for evidence to confirm what we already know to be true. And it doesn't matter for the Christian, we're called to battle against that tendency and walk by faith and not by sight.

But we go, it is deep in the human condition, Mike, to seek two things, explanation and control. So the more something is unexplainable and removes our sense of control, the more we will construct a story that explains it away and gives us a sense of control.

And it doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, a secularist, that tends to be a human tendency. We isageet read into events what we need them to say to fit our preexisting biases.

Meat, Conscience, and Christian Freedom

Talking today to Dr., almost double doctor, double doctor. That's kind of like Dr. J, Double D Dawkins, Daryl Dawkins, Dr. Wes Jamieson on No Compromised Radio. Twice as meaningless. Is there any way people can look you up online or website or if they want to order one of your books or something like that, do you do that or don't you do that?

Well I've, since I've retired, I've kind of gone off the grid to escape the Zog. Okay. No, I'm just joking, Mike. Yes. I don't have a website. I used to, but I don't have a website anymore, but they can look me up.

There's all kinds of stuff on the internet, videos and everything else. And if they want to, they can contact you to get to me.

That's true. And my email is Mike at no compromise radio .com. Wes, it was years ago you invited me to go speak someplace. And I was supposed to be the theological guy or something like that. Round table.

Do you remember? I do not remember what the setting was. Someplace in Nebraska or Iowa, it's something to do with animal rights or something. And you said, can you come and speak?

Yes, that was going to be for a agricultural round table put on. It was actually in Atlanta, Georgia and several of the country's largest agricultural companies and interest groups like the pork people, the chicken people, the beef people wanted to try to kind of, to understand what does the Bible actually say about animals and can we eat them?

So I'd invited you to come to it.

Can we eat them? Well, we can or should we eat them? Oh yes, you should. And you should do so with joy.

No guilt. You don't have to wring your hands. As a matter of fact, it is a metaphor or parable for the sacrifice of Christ. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. Something has to die, Mike, for us to live.

And every time you kill that animal and eat it, remember God made that provision for you as a sort of a shedding of blood so that you could live. So anyways, I invited Mike Eibendroth because he would not only say the truth, he would do it in a shocking, evocative, and provocative way.

In a no compromise way. It is in a no compromise way, but always winsome, which is a key. When you deliver the vinegar, the honey has to be winsome.

One of my tricks for that, by the way, is before the message and after the message or a sermon or a talk. At this particular case, I'm super nice and I try to work the crowd and work the room and then they go, oh, he seemed so nice before he got up there and was dogmatic and didactic.

Hmm. So you, this has to do with dogs, diamonds? No. In any event.

No, I agree completely, Mike. Yes. And so what was, what was I supposed to talk about? How would I have done that?

Well we had a, Walt Kaiser was there. So Walt Kaiser was there and you were going to be, Walt is the, as you know, for those who know Walt Kaiser, he's sort of the 14 million light year view of creation.

He's done a lot of work on, on the Genesis narrative and creation. Okay. What happened at the fall? That's what Walt was going to talk about because one of the arguments of the people that oppose meat eating from a religious perspective is before the fall, it was a vegetarian world.

We're going to bring you in sort of as the strategic care command carpet bombing of post fall. So post fall, what is our condition in relationship to the natural world? And that was your, that was going to be what you were going to speak on.

Just since I remember, and for the listeners, I've known Mike a long time, many years ago when we lived in Massachusetts, we would have him over for dinner. And when his wife would be out of town and he would come over and he always liked me to cook the steaks for him.

And so I'd get a 20 ounce porterhouse. Sometimes really good pork chops. You make a good pork chop. But Mike would say, you know, keep it rare and nothing else other than the meat because just like the Levitical priest, save the choices cuts for me closer to the bone.

The fat belongs to the Lord.

Yes. And it was always fun to watch. Because Mike could, Pastor Abendroth could take almost anything in creation and turn it into a spiritual lesson. And watching him eat a steak was a thing of beauty.

Oh, that's so funny. Well, when, let's just say you meet a brand new Christian today who's been influenced by PETA, the world, all kinds of things where we want to be nice to animals and you look at the cow's eyelashes and everything else.

In all seriousness, if you wanted to just kind of gently help them think through why it's okay to eat meat, what would you say? Kind of a grandfatherly intro.

I would say I would take the Romans 14 and I would say, I would ask them a couple of questions. Do you believe that this is not only good for you, but good for others? Are you evangelical in your zeal to be a vegan?

And then I'd point on Romans 14. Don't make this a contentious issue. If you want to eat just vegetables or you don't like eating animals or you don't like eating animals from confinement, that's your personal choice.

You have the freedom of conscience. I'd also hope they would read the rest about them being a weak believer. They don't realize their freedom in Christ. So I tend to talk to them. That's a good thing, right?

You have to follow you. Jesus is Lord of the conscience. Then you take them through the scriptures gently about, well, Jesus ate meat. He ate the Passover lamb, the Paschal lamb. He created fish for people to eat.

You take them to again and again and again, the instances where the Lord himself commands and commends the eating of meat. But I don't ever try to take them and say, now you need to eat meat. I try to gently press the freedom of the gospel against their conscience without ever telling them they had to convert.

That's good. I mean, maybe, uh, especially like the whole Passover thing with the lamb and Jesus eating that. I'm wondering maybe it was some kind of tofurkey or something possibly.

Could have been, but I've never seen that that has blood to put on the lentil.

Some of those new hamburger type of things, the fake hamburgers, they even have the red beet juice because they know everybody wants something bloody when they're eating it. So they give you the beet juice in the hamburger.

You know, here comes the psycho babble. There's been a lot of work by social psychologists on this and most people subconsciously want to eat meat because they believe they're eating the life force of the animal.

And that's why for the impossible burgers, they have beet juice because you, there's something there you need to eat to feel stronger.

That is so true. I just reminds me of these guys that, you know, cannibals and other people, Aztecs and folks like that. And they want to take the heart and eat it because they've got to eat the life force of the person.

Now this one will amuse and shock your listeners. All right.

All right. If you have children, you're going to have to hide their ears.

There's a growing trend among recidivistic vegans. In other words, people who've fallen away from the vegan faith. Now they want to be authentic. So they will go, like these are tend to be high income, no kids, you know, the, the profile educated somewhere at a university in Boston.

And they will go out to a place where people are hunting, say rural North Carolina. And they will want, they will go to the hunter and want to harvest. When the hunter comes in with their dead deer, they will want to take the liver from the dead deer and eat it raw because they want to sort of reconnect with the animal instinct of eating an animal's essence, sort of like the native Americans used to do, or the, I call them indigenous Americans because I'm a native American.

But the problem is of course, parasites. There's a reason indigenous peoples lived to 24. So we see this need to reconnect with this essence of, of, of the process of dying. We've, people die elsewhere, our pets die elsewhere.

And so they want to reconnect. The problem is they get a parasite and then they reconnect pretty quickly.

No Compromise, the Main Thing, and Closing Exhortation

See that's why I have you on No Compromise Radio because it's just, you know, remember the old days you'd drive the car and you want to change the channel or, or set the channel and you'd have to pull out that little black thing and push it back in.

Yes. That's, that's what we do here in No Compromise with Wes Jamieson. I just pull that thing out and reset and we're off to the next topic. And people are like, what? I thought this was like a show about duplex gratia, but you bring it back to scripture or the Lord Jesus every time.

So I appreciate that. I, well, as I've learned through my walk, it is about the Lord Jesus every time. And it's easy to do when you start realizing you've been a Christian long enough and the Lord gently has taught you, conformed you, and rebuked you.

You begin to see, oh, it actually is about the scriptures. Yeah. Shall I eat meat?

Hmm. I'm a Christian. Well, my savior, he ate meat. I guess it's going to be okay. Kind of like the wine deal, right? Jesus made wine at a wedding. I wonder if it's inherently wrong.

Yes. And it was, and it was probably had alcohol content in it. And so what you begin to, well, for me, Mike, I never had to unlearn theology. I grew up in a pagan family. It was very freeing to realize that his yoke is gentle, his burden is light.

Come to me, all you who are every laden, and I will give you work, I will give you rest. And I keep the main thing, the main thing, and the main dish, the main dish. There's a reason meat is at the center of the plate.

Well, on that note, thanks, Wes, for being on No Compromise Radio. We're going to record one more show so our listeners can listen tomorrow.

That is fantastic. And to the listeners, enjoy everything the Lord's given you.

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.