Prayer Rugs R Us

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.

Studio Update, Donations, and Upcoming Conference

My name is Mike Abendroth, and it is good to be back here in the studio, the plush studio of NoCoRadio. Well, I guess it's not really a plush studio. We are in West Boylston, Massachusetts, and it is late August while I'm recording the show.

I play these shows maybe three or four weeks after I record them, and that's basically because I have a real job. Maybe we put that donate button front and center on NoCoRadio, a portion of your donation will be given to the ministry, the No Compromise Radio ministry.

So maybe one of my all-time favorite emails was when a lady wrote and said, I don't know how to give money to the show. How do I give money to the show? So but it is that time of year again. We have $900 ,000 in the hole in debt because we've overextended ourselves.

Just kidding. We don't. All right. Well, what do we have here? My brother Pat Abendroth is a pastor, Omaha Bible Church, and he's going to be coming to Massachusetts October 4th and 5th and 6th for a conference, and the conference is going to be entitled Behold the Lamb, and the whole conference is going to be about Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.

And Friday night, men only, October 4th, Pat Abendroth teaches a session about trends in evangelicalism or trendiness or something. Then I'll do a Q &A with Pat. Then Saturday, open to all, Pat preaches Behold the Lamb.

I preach Worthy is the Lamb from Revelation. Pat preaches Salvation Belongs to the Lamb, session three, and then he'll preach both Sunday morning services. So you can go online if you'd like to register, Omaha Bible Church.

Other than that, you can probably listen to the things later for a fee. I just recorded the Stand Up for the Truth radio interview, and that was exceptional. Not my part was exceptional, but I should say the hosts, Mike and Amy, were exceptional, and it was an exceptional experience.

Let me make sure I get that straight. I don't mean I was exceptional. See, that was live. That's a lot harder than this, because so far I've already hit the replay, redo, rebuff it probably two or three times.

So anyway, you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. We've got some NoCo 90s on the YouTube site, No Compromise 90. If you've got some ideas for that, please let me know. Those are getting more difficult as time goes on, although now that I'm back in the crack studio here, the study down in the vaults of West Boylston, it might be easier.

Well, what else happened? I was glad to preach at Valley Bible Church in Hercules, California a month or two ago. I was glad to preach at Trinity Bible Church in Felton, California just a couple weeks ago, and we had a refreshing time in California.

A Conversation at Home Depot and the Reality of Divine Healing

I do have to tell you one story. I've got lots of stories, but before we get into our topic today, prayer rugs, I went to Home Depot with my wife and my son, who is 16 now. He's almost as tall as I am because I'm actually shrinking.

I've got a couple of bad discs. So I used to be close to 6 '2", I'm probably six foot only now, and my son is just getting taller and taller. Well, we went to Home Depot and they had some, I don't know, lilacs, lilies, some plant my wife wanted, and they had kind of a discount section, but my wife said, oh, these are the kinds that might not look too good right now, but just with a little TLC, they prop right up and are excellent plants.

So I was talking to the checkout lady at Home Depot in California, and it was the gardening section checkout. So you've got the inside deal with the scanners, then the outside one, and they're in a little booth there, a little toll booth almost, and we started talking, there was not really anybody behind me in line at the time, and something to the effect of, hi, how are you, good to see you, and then it turned into, well, I said something about politicians running the world or something, I don't know, it was a weird comment, I can't remember, and she said, well, we know the one who's in control of the world, and I thought, oh, this is kind of nice, and I said, yes, we do, Daniel 2 and Daniel 4, it is the Lord who runs, rules, and reigns.

I didn't give him that alliteration, but that's just for you, the radio audience. Well, she said, I'm a Christian. I said, well, I'm a Christian too, neat, what church do you go to? And she went to the Apostolic Journey, Eagle's Nest, I don't know the name, something, have you ever seen that website that generates names of churches?

I don't know if it still exists, but it used to exist, and so you could tell them, we're Baptistic, we're Fundamentalist, we're King James only, we're slightly charismatic, we're way charismatic, we're high liturgical, we're Episcopalian, and you'd enter in all your data and then it would tell you the name of your church.

So you could be, you know, Tabernacle, Fundamentalist, Bible, Temple, and you would know that was okay, King James only. Anyway, the charismatic ones were always Eagle's Nest and Soaring Higher and something about deers and eagles.

So, then she said, well, my ex-husband, I guess she's trying to give me her testimony. She said, my ex-husband shot me three times, do you want to see the bullet holes? I thought, I have to use this as some illustration for something, I don't know what.

But anyway, she, I mean, I didn't even really say no, I couldn't say anything, there I am trying to buy my lithocrampic, you know, lyceum lilies and the labyrinth crawling something, what's this? There's something she bought, I think it starts with an L, I don't know.

She's like, I don't know studio equipment, I don't know flowers names either, unless they're tulips, of course. So, anyway, in her ankle, she had three holes and they look like they had healed. I'm not laughing that she got shot, I'm just laughing that she showed me and that they were healed.

It wasn't a divine healing because I could still see the scar. And anyway, he was in the other room upset and started shooting the gun, it went through the drywall and hit her, so he wasn't aiming for her.

So anyway, that was my trip to California. What does it have to do really with anything? Well, maybe I could segue with divine healings that people are claiming now, but usually they are healings that are not biblical in nature.

In other words, when you look at the Bible, healings were spontaneous, healings were instantaneous, healings were complete, healings were organic. I think there's one time and it was because Jesus had a reason to do it, kind of a two-step healing.

The Prayer Rug Mailer and False Faith-Healing Promises

So I got some stuff, I think Terry from Ohio left this for me, I don't know if he was at the church or he just sent it in. And he sent me a prayer rug. Now I don't know if you have a prayer rug, I have some rugs here, but I now have a prayer rug.

So it is a St. Matthew prayer rug. So the good news is I like St. Matthew. Good news is I like rugs. But this, speaking of purple, see how this all ties together in No Compromise Radio? This is a purplish prayer rug, I guess purple for kings.

And it's got a picture of Jesus on the front, I guess it's Jesus. And he's got a beard, it looks like he's got a tear coming down his eye. His eyes are closed, and he has thorns and longish hair, and it says church prayer rug.

Then on the front it says, look into Jesus's eyes, you will see they are closed. But as you continue to look, you will see his eyes opening and looking back into your eyes. Okay, I'm trying, I'm trying.

You know what? I see it because it's one of those optical illusions. When you first look at it, they look closed, and when you look at it more, it's kind of like that little psychology thing, or that little optical illusion, you see either a pretty woman, or you see an old hag, depending on how you look at it.

I can see his eyes just open, I'm kidding. Then go and be alone and kneel on this rug of faith, or touch it to both knees. So if you can't kneel, you just touch it to both knees. Then please check your needs on our letter to you.

Please return this prayer rug, do not keep it. Okay, so that's the front. This is spooky. Then on the back, this St. Matthew 1819 Bible prayer rug, and so I would not do you a service. I would do you a disservice if I didn't tell you what 1819 is, although I think you can about guess.

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. Well we know the context of church discipline, but it doesn't make much difference if you have a all-seeing, Jesus-eye purple praying rug, probably ordered through Home Depot California.

It says, but I got a problem, there's no way two people could fit on this. It says here, if two of you agree, use it immediately, then please return it with your prayer needs checked on our letter to you.

I think what they really mean is, return it with your prayer needs check in our name. You know we wonder sometimes if our kids ever listen to us, and does it ever sink in, and so I was at a Bible study in California teaching some college students, Romans 12, a few Monday nights ago with my friends Zach and Charlene who organized it, and afterwards my son was talking about Benny Hinn and stuff like that, and he was talking about false teachers who say send your money to Jesus and then they give you their own address.

And so I say that a lot, I'm sure I stole it from someone else, it was lifted from someone else, but I heard my son saying it. I was so happy, I thought, yes, he actually does listen. It must be mailed to a second home that needs a blessing after you use it.

Prayer works, expect God's blessings. So what do you think of that No Compromise radio? It does have some testimonials here. It shows a lady with the prayer rug, and it says underneath it, healed. Dear St. Matthews, after I received the prayer package, I was healed of severe pains that I was suffering from in my left leg.

Well, see, here's the problem. So far, this prayer rug has not healed my pains, it's given me pains. It's a pain in my neck. It's a pain in my soul. It's a pain that people could be so gullible to be fleeced like this.

These tangible things that you do, when you think about the great liturgy of the Old Testament and the priest and the temple and even the liturgy in the tabernacle and the sights and the smells and the tactile overload it could be.

We've moved now to the New Testament, and Jesus, He is enough. He is the one. The liturgy now is basically the carpenter, Jesus. Now, of course, the New Testament saints, when they get together, they celebrate the Lord's Supper and baptism, they sing, there's Scripture reading, preaching.

I understand that. But when you, here's my point, when you move away from the centrality and the simplicity and the supremacy of Christ Jesus, then you've got to have all this other stuff. Friends, we walk by faith and not by sight.

And when I used to get little dabs of oil in the mail and rub this oil on your wallet to get a blessing, and I can't remember who did that, Marilyn Hickey probably did that, say to your wallet, your wallet, you're full of money or something.

It's just sad. And so we have been thankfully delivered from such thinking. And so it does pain me because people still buy into this. Oh, some of the people aren't Christians who buy into it. They're just greedy and they want this.

They're the TBNers and they want to sow seeds so they get money back themselves. And they think that God's blessings are primarily physical. I mean, lots of God's blessings are physical, aren't they? Aren't you glad that God has designed our body so that it heals itself and has an immune system and antibodies?

But eventually we all die and there's something more important than spiritual blessings. And even if you think about exercise, bodily exercise does profit, but it doesn't profit as much as spiritual exercise because the eternal things are more important than the temporal ones.

And so these things here that I read, I received the prayer rug, I felt absolutely no more pain and still don't have pain, I was healed, Sister JB is the one who got the healing, and other people who got blessings, God bless me, after they prayed with $5 ,000.

Here's one from Texas, and of course it's a Texas-sized blessing, of course. Our Lord has blessed us with a big six-room house, Mrs. TF said. Somebody in Delaware did this prayer rug and God made it possible for us to buy 17 acres of land.

California said, ARF in California, the Lord has healed my throat. And then this guy said I got a new car and a job. With God it says all things are possible, St. Matthew 19. So prayer by letters, St. Matthew's churches, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 74121, you don't want to get caught up in that, do you?

Isn't the Bible enough? Don't we have the sufficiency of Scripture? If Scriptures aren't sufficient, then they are what? Deficient. Oh, I'm just looking at these other pages of this stuff. Something good is about to happen.

I mean, this is like one of those things, if you don't send this letter along, you get a curse. This is just the exact opposite. Please do not open this prophecy until you have placed your prayer page, that's page two of our letter to you, and the prayer rug back in the mail before sunset tomorrow or the next day, if you're busy.

God will help you do this. You will see. The Bible says with God all things are possible. To read more about how God is answering prayer, log on to biblicalprayer .com and to about St., spelled out, matthewschurches .com where you can read testimonies.

And then of course they quote a Bible verse that's not even in the best manuscripts, Mark 16, 19. So, then after the Lord had spoken to them, he was received up to heaven and sat on the right hand of God.

And that is true, but that's just, I don't like when people quote those verses in Mark. Okay. Well, thank God that this anointed prayer rug is back in the mail on its way to the 61-year-old church so we can send it on to another dear soul.

We thank you. Surely you shall be blessed. If people have the gift of healing today, then they are the most wicked people that I know. What do you mean by that? Well, let's think big picture for a second.

Do I believe that God exists? Yes. Do I believe in more than the natural world existing? Yes. Because if you put those two together, that means I believe in supernatural being, God. And he can do things above nature.

He can do things through nature, above nature. God is supernatural being. And if you read 1929 Erdman's J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, that really is the battle, the supernatural nature of God.

And Machen makes the point quite clear using scriptures that, in fact, God is that. So that means God can heal. God can do anything he wants in and through nature or over nature. And he can do miraculous things because he is a great God.

He is exalted, and he is over all. Well, the question is, why did God heal in the Bible? Well, you can look through the Bible and find out God healed for lots of reasons. He healed, Jesus healed to show that, in fact, he was the Messiah prophesied about in the Old Testament.

Jesus healed, and there's healing by God in the Old Testament because God is merciful, God is kind, and God is compassionate. He cares for people, and so there's healings done. And there are healings done to prove a point.

They're called sign healings that point to something else. If you see a sign that says Sacramento, 400 miles, you don't go up and hug the sign if you're wanting to go to Sacramento. It's telling you Sacramento's over there.

And so God regularly used healings in three time periods, the time periods of healings and miracles. Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and Jesus and the apostles. During those time periods, there were quite a few healings.

In other time periods, no healings. And so they were to point to the messenger and to the message, to authenticate them as God's representative. Remember, the canon of Scripture was not yet completed.

We did not have 66 books of the Bible. The book of Revelation had not been pinned, nor any other New Testament book for that matter, if we're talking about Moses' day or Elijah's day. And so how do you know if someone's telling the truth?

I hope you're a good Berean. I hope you follow Paul's exhortation to the Thessalonians and 1 Thessalonians 5. Whatever I say, you need to examine what I say according to Scripture. Everybody you listen to, your favorite Bible teacher, your pastor, you have to examine and then you can prove if I'm telling the truth or not.

How? Because you have the final authority. You have the Bible in your hands. Can you imagine back in the old days how hard it was to get a copy of the Bible because it was expensive, because you'd be persecuted, because they were all burned?

And now how many Bibles do we have? I mean, I don't know how many Bibles I have. I won't count the electronic ones, but I've got a lot of Bibles. I own many Bibles. And so you know that when God does something as a sign gift for healings or miracle, it was to confirm that in fact the message and or the messenger was true.

Well, once we got the canon, my question for you is, why does God still need to validate a person? Now he can still do miracles. He can still heal in a miraculous way that is not through the human body's normal system, nor doctors, nor medicine.

People, you know, you have a tumor and then you don't and you've been praying that the tumor goes away. Do I believe something like that could happen? Yes, I do. But I don't believe people now have the gift of healings because there's no reason to have the gift of healing.

And because the reason would be, back in the Bible, to tell you, yes, in fact, what that person said is true and that they were a authentic messenger from God. I already know if you're authentic now or not.

Do you teach the Bible accurately? And then I know. So let's just say for argument's sake that somebody does have the gift of healing today. And we're not going to talk about the rug, although this is a spooky kind of Jesus face.

I got to get out of here. My name is Mike Ebenroth, by the way, NoCoRadio. And you had the gift of healing. Well, the people in the New Testament, they had the gift of healing. And they, for the most part, I think you could go back and look and probably be hard to find people who are sick.

Those that the villages they went to, these people were healed. And we had people raised from the dead. We had blind people who could see. We had some spectacular healings in the New Testament. And people had the gift of healing.

Well, if you've got the gift of healing today, why aren't you at Children's Hospital? See, that's why I mean you're wicked if you have the gift of healing today and you need to have somebody come to a crusade.

I'll never forget when I went to Benny Hinn Crusade in Anaheim. Oh, it was probably 1992, 94. I think that was right about the time when he was really taken off. And we got there, but we got there too late.

Because if you were bused in from a church, you got access. And a lot of people who couldn't get in were in wheelchairs. And they just didn't have a bad knee or a bad back in the wheelchair. They were really hurting.

And they couldn't get in. And I just thought, okay, if you can't get people in because there are other people who need healings in there, all right, well, then you can just come out afterwards. But if I had the gift of healing and I didn't go outside to heal the rest of the people, I mean, just how wicked would I be?

How selfish would I be? Gifts are for other people. And so don't you go to Children's Hospital. I've worked at Children's Hospitals before in the operating room and have seen the parents give their kids a kiss before surgery, their head shaved, cranny, you know, brain surgery.

And the parents can't go past the red line and the child and chemo. I mean, it is just heart-wrenching. So if you've got the gift of healing, where are you? Where are you? You're receiving money and faith pledges and seed money and TBN and if you do this and if you have enough faith.

I mean, how wicked is it then saying, you know, you didn't get healed because you didn't have enough faith. It's already wicked you didn't. First of all, they're lying. And second of all, they're pushing now back on the people.

So we need to run away from the, I was going to say, hate feelers. It's just as bad, the faith healers of the world. And if you get stuff like this in the mail and you want to look at it and laugh, well, that's fine because it is laugh worthy.

But it's also sad. We need to have people run from this. And then they send their money in, older ladies and probably old men do too, send the money in, shame on that. So if you want real biblical healing, let's start off with the most important thing and that is to turn from your sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the risen Savior who died as a substantiate sacrifice for sinners like you.

And then everything else you get or don't get is secondary.

Ministry Sign-Off and Station Disclaimer

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.

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