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Pastor Mike interviews Jeff Waddington on today's show. Jeff is from Reformed Forum-a reformed theology media network, which seeks to serve the church by providing content dedicated to issues in reformed theology.
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. Usually here at the radio station, we have Mondays, a recorded sermon, First Corinthians Exposition, recorded here at Bethlehem Bible Church. Tuesdays, Pastor Steve and I like to talk about the world in general and evangelicalism, church issues.
Wednesdays, I like to have guests. Thursdays, try to teach something positive, K-love kind of Thursday. And then Fridays, we like to go after people, a little bit of rebuking those who contradict Titus chapter 1.
Well, today, since it's Wednesday, we have a special guest, a new friend of mine, Jeff Waddington. Jeff, welcome to No Compromise Radio.
Oh, thank you for having me on the program.
Jeff, I knew your voice before I knew your face. And how could that be? How could you know someone's, their voice before their face?
You're greatly blessed in that, by the way. Yeah.
Well, I hear you regularly on reformedforum .org, and you are one of the hosts there for that show. And I want you to know, Jeff, that on my iPod, my iPad, my iPhone, whatever they are, I have White Horse Inn, I have Sinclair Ferguson, Sunday morning, Sunday night, I have Christ the Center.
I think that's it. You guys are the only people I listen to. I'm humbled. So tell us a little bit about your association with Reformed Forum. What is that show? And then we'll talk about you and your ministry after that.
Well, the Reformed Forum, our desire is, of course, spread the gospel, convey the Reformed message. And actually, other pastors, but also in the press, would get together and we'd sit down and talk about biblical and theological issues.
And it's somewhat ordained into the ministry. We said to ourselves, wow, maybe the Center came into existence actually, and then after that, it's been one and a half years now.
Well, Jeff, some of the No Compromise listeners would be familiar with a few of your guests, such as Carl Truman and Daryl Hart. And so I've tried to interview some of those guys, but I have to tell you, when I listen to you guys talk about some of the topics in the Reformed world, sometimes I feel like I went to a Bible college instead of a Bible seminary.
How does that work out?
I'll respond to that. Well, let's listen... We didn't... We don't... On the one hand, we didn't want to make things simplistic, but we do recognize, based on our interaction with listeners, that we do need to be clear and understandable.
Well, I'm not trying to imply that it was not understandable, because the other day I was listening to Vern Poitras as one of the guests on your show, and he talked about even ministry regarding evangelism, and he said, I like to ask people this question, and it was in light of some Ventillian ideas, he said, I like to ask unbelievers this question, when did you stop believing in God?
Because that leads me into the story of their life and the narrative of their life, and that's how I like to evangelize. So very, very clear, very, very simple, just because something's Reformed, it doesn't mean it's difficult.
That's true. And other folk have made the comment that the show does Christ Center does sometimes fly.
But see, I like that, because if you've It James Dozell on about the impassibility of God? And I think he went to Master's Seminary, so you guys are not...you guys aren't against crazy premillennialists like James Boyce now, are you?
I mean, we're all primarily Amils, but there is freedom with the eschatological view.
You can be premillennial and be an OPC pastor, can't you? Yes.
Now, I will admit, it's a rarity, but it is possible.
Well tell our listeners today a short introduction about the OPC. Some of them are familiar with Machen. Tell us what an Orthodox Presbyterian Church is, because Jeff, when our folks travel who are listening to the radio and the podcast, I personally, if I find an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the Yellow Pages, which sometimes you guys don't even list yourselves, well that's another subject, I would rather go to an OPC church than a Baptist church than a Bible church, because I know exactly what I'm going to get at an Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
I'm not talking PCUSA, I'm not talking USA. Tell us about the background of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and really, what are some of your tenets and pillars?
Okay. Well, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church came out of the Presbyterian Church USA, the PCUSA, back in 1936, and you already mentioned J. Gress of Machen, the primary founding father. And that all, the whole fundamentalist modernist controversy of the early 1900s, you may remember, your listeners may be familiar with the fact that Princeton Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey had been a bastion of Reformed Orthodoxy for many years, 100 plus years, and then about 1929, they were amalgamated in the era of liberalism and resigning, along with several of his colleagues on the faculty.
They then established Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia and Glenside, where I am right now. But in 1930, the culmination of Dr. Machen's rise as independent board. He was definitely defrocked. Our denomination has never been a large denomination in terms of numbers, specifically in the Westminster.
Seminary. Yeah, but Jeff, on the positive side, just kidding. You are committed to expositional preaching, correct? Absolutely. Yes, and what are you preaching through right now, Sunday morning, Sunday night?
Through the Gospel of John, and in the evenings...
And as the teacher of the Calvary OPC in Ringos, New Jersey. By the way, I always wanted to ask you, Ringos, why is it called Ringos?
It's not even located in Ringos, how's that? But Ringos is a community, and I can't for the life of me tell you where that comes from, but we're near Flint, only about a half mile from where I live, so if you know where Princeton is, you have some idea of where we are.
Absolutely.
I've been to the cemetery there in Princeton and then walked past B .B. Warfield's tomb and then got the anointing, kind of like Kathryn Kuhlman did in Benny Hinn. Jeff, let's talk a little bit about theology and the Reformed faith.
How about this? What if someone says, they're listening today, and maybe they love Charles Stanley or Chuck Swindoll, and they say, well, I don't really need Calvin or Luther or Zwingli or men who are part of the Reformation and the children of the Reformation.
I have the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is my teacher. How would you respond to that?
You may not need Calvin or Zwingli or any other Reformed luminary, but God works through means, and the Holy Spirit didn't begin working in the church with me or with you. It's been working in the church, well, of course, we can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, right, in Genesis 3 .15.
But God uses me, Calvin, or used by God in the past. The value of a Calvin or the value of an Edwards or the value of a Machen or a Spurgeon is that they are biblical. I don't know if that gets at quite what you were looking for.
Yeah, I know you agree with me, Jeff, that the Spirit of God, he has been working past Acts 28, and he has teachers that he has given us to equip the saints for the work of ministry. And I know you have good manners, and you're a guest on my show, but if I was on No Compromise Radio, I might say something like, at the root, that it could be a very arrogant question.
I've got the Holy Spirit. I don't need anyone else. Who are you to tell me? It really ignores God's gift to the church, his gifts to the church, who include Calvin and Luther. So that's a great answer.
Let me ask you another question. I know you did not grow up Reformed. You probably were born a Pelagian, like everyone else, and then you graduated to semi-Pelagianism as you got saved, and then you grew into the Reformed faith.
Let me ask you this. When people first grasp God is sovereign in everything, including salvation, and they start understanding Calvinism and the doctrines of grace, sometimes they go too far overboard and they can become very obnoxious and very prideful.
What kind of advice would you give to some of the new Reformed converts? I don't mean converts to Christianity, but they're converted to the doctrines of grace and converted to some of the confessions, and they just need to take a kind of a chill pill, if you will.
What would you tell them?
Yeah, you're in the cage stage. And what we mean is, when a person who's been a Christian, as you've already said, they tend to be overwhelmed with the beauty and the wonder of it all, and they tend to go to be pretty obsessive with what they've discovered.
I guess the thing to do is that we should not fall into, let's say, we're now Reformed, so we shouldn't act as if, you know, pragmatically we're still Arminian.
Okay, that's a great response. Some people like to say we should pray—let's see, how do they say that? We should believe like we're Calvinistic, but we should pray like Arminians, and I think it was Jonathan Gershman who said, don't do anything like an Arminian.
Right, exactly.
The things, I guess, in my own pilgrimage is that I've learned that I'm not—important doesn't matter is what we're talking about. The thing, you know, you may take that for other people, because we are smart enough.
And I think maybe that's that we, for now, we haven't yet seen the light.
We're talking to Jeff Waddington today on No Compromise Radio, one of the co-hosts at ReformForum .org, and teacher of Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Ringos, New Jersey. Jeff, there's a man at our church who now understands the doctrines of grace, and I was talking to him a while ago, and he said, it took me probably five years to believe these things, to submit to who God is and what He says in Scripture regarding election and depravity and the atonement, etc.
And so to his particular case, if he's trying to convert someone else from Arminianism to Augustinianism, it took him five years. He can't expect other people to buy into it the first time they hear it, right?
That's—or in many ways, it's going to be like sharing the faith with an unbeliever. We don't convert. We can be the instrument or the tool in the hands of the Holy Spirit. We can give a reason for the hope that it's within us.
But at the end of the day, it's the Holy Spirit who changes a person.
I'm reminded of Al Martin's small booklet, Banner of Truth booklet, called The Practical Implications of Calvinism. I think you can get that online for free, by the way. Al Martin, Practical Implications of Calvinism.
And he basically says, since God is sovereign, if we believe these things, we only believe them because God has revealed it to us through His Spirit anyway, and so that should force us to be humble. Christians should be humble people, and certainly Calvinists should be all the more humble.
Wouldn't you agree?
It's complicated, is that in our post-modern world, skepticism is the basis for humility. That's true. That is exactly true. So our basis, so our pattern for humility needs to be God's Word and not, you know, the unbelieving world.
Let me ask you some more personal questions for my own benefit. How do you pick your guests for Reformed Forum?
Very often, it's someone we personally know, or someone we're interested in interacting with them. No mystery in that one, actually.
All right. How about if somebody says, well, I grew up in a Calvary Chapel church, Assemblies of God vineyard, and I know we have to respond, the Bible says, to repent and believe, and I think I did repent and believe, so I can't really grasp unconditional election.
What would you tell someone who's struggling with unconditional election and God choosing? What should they read? How should they think through the issues?
Start with God's Word. Well, maybe it's not so obvious, but let's start with God's Word. In places like Ephesians, you know, I think the Gospel of John to the bone with the doctrine of election. In faith, I decided in my personal devotions to read through the Gospel of John.
Nobody told me to do that, at least I don't remember anybody telling me. And I remember reading it, and I'm saying, wow, you know, the difference between the saved and the unsaved, the elected and the reprobate, whatever language you want to use, that Gospel.
I found that particularly, beyond the Bible, I had a conversation a few years back with my elder, and she asked me the question, how can I know if I'm elect? And I said, well, the only way you can know you're elect, as people often make, is to try to answer the question of election or to try to grapple with the question of election.
Election is not the exception.
Jeff, one of my favorite preachers who died about 10 years ago, S. Lewis Johnson, he used to say in a very pastoral way, if you're wondering if you're elect or not, come to Christ Jesus by faith in Him and repentance, and let's settle that issue once and for all right now.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think that's exactly what you're saying. Tell me—. Exactly. That was well put. We've got about four minutes left. What do you take with this blog war that's going on with the idea of justification and sanctification becoming maybe merged, or sanctification is looking back, justification, as maybe Tulian would put it, and Rick Phillips has responded, maybe Truman has responded.
Tell us what's your take on that, and then how should we see sanctification biblically?
Well, I do come at it—I do take sides, although I think—okay, so I would side with Rick Phillips. I think Rick has stated things quite well. And basically, his criticism of Tulian Chevigian, that Billy Graham's granddaddy James Kennedy intended to do this, the tendency is for him to say that sanctification is our getting use of the Christian to follow undermines our assurance, undermines our justification.
Rick Phillips offers a pretty—sanctification does involve being mindful of our justification, so you know, that's true. But sanctification, we are united to our—as Calvin would put it, we get a—of these Adam and Eve sins—.
Well, see, that's exactly why, Jeff, I listened to the Reform Forum, because those last 90 seconds were crystal clear. Did you read the new Kevin deYoung book, Hole in Our Holiness? I think he addresses—.
I have it on. Yeah, it's an excellent book. I'm just reading 1 Corinthians chapter 15 right now. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them.
And then Paul quickly says, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. I think Tulane wants to guard the gospel. I'm glad for that. I think we should look back to the gospel. Bridges is right.
Preach the gospel to yourself every day. But I'm glad for men like Rick Phillips, who in love will put some correctives on some of the theologies that we have as younger men. Right. Well, Jeff Waddington's been our guest today.
You usually host the show with Camden Busey. Christ the Center, found at reformedforum .org. Or you can Google Jeff at his church, the Church of the Pastors, Calvary OPC Church, Ringgoes, New Jersey. Jeff, it's been great to have you on No Compromise Radio.
I appreciate your ministry. Thank you.
My privilege. And I appreciate yours as well. 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 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.
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