To Catch a False Doctrine Smuggler (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, �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.

A Busy Week of Family Milestones and Church Life

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and it is a very sunny, nice day today, Saturday, May 15th in real time. In no-code time, I don�t know, it�s like Wednesday, the 22nd, or whatever day that will be.

It has been a whirlwind week or two. Started off with my daughter, Gracie, she�s 20. She got baptized a couple Sundays ago. That was exciting. Then, my daughter, Maddie, she graduated from a master�s university on Friday, two Fridays ago.

Then, my daughter, Haley, was married to Martin on Saturday, and then it was Mother�s Day on Sunday. Then, it was my birthday on Wednesday, and then it was Kim�s birthday yesterday. I�m tired. Then of course, evangelicalism is just crazy, caught up with all kinds of stuff.

I can�t really keep up. I look here and there, but since I�m not involved in Twitter and Facebook like I used to be, never really Facebook, but Twitter, I don�t know what goes on in evangelicalism. But I assume, I�m not a prophet or a son of a prophet, but I assume it�s crazy.

I assume it�s wacky. Gospel Coalition Canada is on the verge of, I don�t know what they�re doing, theological bankruptcy. Is that chapter 11 for them, or chapter 13? What is that? Francis Chan, is he a Roman Catholic yet?

Soon enough. Rick Warren, women pastorettes, there�s no such thing as a woman pastor, because the office, by God, his church, bought with his son�s blood, doesn�t allow for a woman to be a pastor. So you can call yourself a pastorina, an elderette, a pastor, you can call yourself that, but you�re not.

So he didn�t ordain three pastors. By the way, I think if I saw things correctly, it seemed like all the people laying their hands on the pastorinas all had masks on. But somehow, these newly ordained pastorinas, pastorettes, they didn�t have to have masks on.

I don�t know. I thought that was like one of the vows, mask it or casket it. I�m watching the things along the freeway, you know, protect others, get vaccinated, and I�m not going to turn this show into a vaccination thing.

I just find it interesting. Whenever I�ve been to the doctor, he said, or she said, in this particular case for this blood stuff that I was, blood issues I was having, she said, �Well, you should get the shingles vaccination and the pneumonia vaccination.

But she never said, �For the protection of other people. She never said that. And you know what? And you say, �Well, that�s of a different kind, we�re talking apples and oranges. I said, �How about the flu vaccine

I�ve never received it, I don�t think, maybe once in my life. And they said, �Well, since you�ve got this blood stuff, you should get it for the protection of other people. Very, very interesting.

So anyway, thanks for your prayers. Thanks for your support. I think we have 13 Patreon supporters. Thank you very much for that. We�ve got some things in store for NoCo. If I could just have a week that was unlike last week, although it was a great week.

Kim and I got home, we�re empty nesters now, and we got home and it was kind of one of those, �Thank you, Lord, for your faithfulness, resting, joy. The beach was at a place called Sycamore Cove in Malibu, of all places.

Not because we�re fancy, but that�s just where we could find a beach that the high tide wasn�t just taking over the sand. And my son stood where I would stand normally to officiate. Luke stood there. And then I walked Haley, my daughter, down the isle, sand isle, beach isle, that they kind of had braked a little bit to make it look real nice and smooth.

And then Luke did my typical 1539 Thomas Cramner Anglican prayer book, �We are gathered together today in the sight of God and these witnesses, et cetera. And then he prayed, and then he said, �Who gives this woman to be married to this man

And then I said, �Her mother and I. No, I did not. While Kim has done most of the raising of the kids, and the hard work, hard rowing has been done by Kim, certainly, she�s not the head of the household, and that doesn�t make her less, that just makes God�s design God�s design.

And therefore, when I hear men, maybe they don�t think about it. And when I hear Dad say, �Her mother and I then I just always think, �Well, wait a second. Aren�t you the head of the household? Aren�t you, symbolically, the one who walks her down the isle?

Why don�t you both walk her down the isle And you say, �Well, yeah, maybe we should. �Well, you can do whatever you want. But I said, �I do because I�m endorsing this man for my daughter. And then I hand her off to him, and then Luke went over to where the groomsmen were, and then I officiated the rest of the wedding.

So it was very wonderful. Thanks for your prayers. All four of my kids are now in California, and I keep getting asked, �When am I going to go to California and move there by the kids Because grandkids and all that other stuff.

And I have no plans on moving to California. Who knows what will happen in the future? I guess if some Patreon supporter wants to give the million dollars, I might consider it. I have been asked in the past several times, �Would I move someplace to start a church

And I think, �You know what? Those people that say that, they need to move here at Bethlehem Bible Church, because I can�t keep moving over to all these places. And the bad news is, there�s just a dearth of Bible-teaching pastors.

More so than that, a dearth of Christ-exalting Bible-teaching pastors. Very often, you have these guys, and they�re wanting to do exposition, and they�re getting down into lexical word studies, and they forget the big picture.

And they forget the one who motivates Christians. They forget that Christians need a Savior as well, and that Jesus has the power to help them say yes to living righteously, vivification, and to say no to sin and unrighteousness and ungodly passions, mortification.

And I really think the missing element, not just in seeker-sensitive churches, although that�s true, but even mainline evangelical churches, Bible churches, they don�t understand sanctification, they don�t understand the role of Jesus in the life of a church, in the life of a Christian, what�s the motivation for holy living.

And for most people, they are functional Wesleyans that just hammer their people with the law. But that�s not my topic for the day. You can write me, Mike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com. I think we have about 28 deposits for the Israel trip in February 22, 2022, in the year 2929, if man is still alive.

There are bombs going off and all that, and there usually are, but I think Hamas has smelled some weakness in some world leaders, our world leader, and who knows if we�ll go or not, but we�re going to plan on it.

We can get refunds back through October. I�m trying to see if I can get some more seats. Right now there are 25 slots. They�re all filled, and we have a few on the waiting list. Hopefully we�ll all be able to make it, and that�s that.

Catching Smuggled False Doctrine

I, like you, probably, you know, look for shows that I could watch on Hulu or Netflix or YouTube or any of those kind of things, and I found one on Hulu a while ago to catch a smuggler. And you know, documentaries are pretty interesting.

You can watch the one about the Gardner Museum heist. You can watch the one here, that�s in Massachusetts, the one, How to Fix a Drug Scandal or Drug Bust or something, that�s local here in Massachusetts.

I think both of those are Netflix, both interesting. To Catch a Smuggler is a documentary that shows border protection, U .S. Custom folks trying to catch drug smugglers. Drug smugglers are getting pretty inventive.

Is that a word? Inventive? They�re inventors of evil? They�re getting creative, creative ways to smuggle into the U .S. And of course, as COVID hit, there�s all kinds of drugs that they wanted, and people are at home doing drugs.

And some of the interesting ones that I�ve seen, they put cocaine into casts, you know, you break your arm and you put your arm in a cast, laced with cocaine. They put cocaine in soups. They put cocaine in designer shoes.

One interesting case was they inserted 80 pounds of cocaine inside the stomachs of live boa constrictors to smuggle those. Sometimes they have stuffed carrots with drugs. Cocaine pallets, Spanish police have seized dozen of suspiciously bent pallets that looked like dark wood, and the same shipment contained large amounts of charcoal.

The account reads, �Further, upon closer examination, both the pallets and the charcoal turned out to be made of 1 .4 tons of compressed cocaine. But they weren�t very strong. People soak cocaine, hydrochloride into fabric, into clothes, and, you know, they�re looking at the clothes in people�s suitcases, and they�re kind of heavy, you know, what is going on.

But maybe the wildest, and I think it�s the wildest because it has a theological slant to it, and that is Laredo, Texas. The agents found a statue of Jesus, I don�t think the real Jesus, but allegedly, I don�t know if he looks like that.

I�m pretty sure he doesn�t. Six pounds of cocaine mixed into the plaster, and the account reads this, �Some say you couldn�t put a price on Jesus, but this particular one would be worth about $30 ,000 on the street.

And you smuggle the statue in, then you dilute it in water, and you dry it, and then you, I guess, snort it. The good news is we find a lot of this stuff. We have street smart agents, we have secondary pat-down rooms, x-rays, gamma rays, and probably the thing that helps the most, drug-sniffing dogs, discovering smuggled drugs.

How to Detect False Teachers and Their Damning Doctrine

My question for you today at No Compromise Radio Ministry is, how do we discover false doctrine that�s smuggled into churches? How do we spot false teachers? We want to avoid false teachers, do we not?

We want to know why we should avoid them, why they�re false, but once we know that, we need to make sure that we don�t let them smuggle not just drugs into the church, although that would be bad too, but bad theology, bad doctrine, bad teaching about the Lord Jesus, using probably Christian vocabulary, but saying the wrong things to define said vocabulary.

How to catch false teachers who smuggle in damning doctrines. Very important for us as Christians because these false teachers that we�re talking about in 2 Peter 2 today, they want you to live a lifestyle commensurate with their calling.

For us as Christians, if we�re called into the faith by the sovereign grace of God, we, Ephesians 4, 1, want to live in a manner worthy of our calling. We�ll never completely, on earth, live up to our calling, but that�s our desire, is it not, to live a life that�s reflective of Jesus as His holiness, His righteousness, His law-keeping.

Of course, we have Him positionally, and then in light of that, we�d like to live that out practically. He is, of course, our sin-bearer, but in many regards, we think of Jesus, rightfully so, 1 Peter 2, as an example, although we fail following the example, therefore, we need Him as a sacrifice, yet we�d like to live godly lives, holy lives, law-keeping lives.

But what happens with unbelievers, it�s just not some kind of esoteric belief. It�s not something that�s just, �Oh, they just believe something weird about Jesus. Full stop. No, they believe something weird about Jesus, something funky about the Bible, and that affects the way people live.

They will teach things that will lead to ungodly living, unholy living, lawless living, and you can take it to the B-A-N-K, that is, if you have false teaching, you�re going to have bad, unholy, false living.

It�s just a fact. And evangelicals sometimes have no stomach for standing up to false teachers. �Oh, He�s kind, He�s nice, He�s friendly. I mean, when you think about these drug smugglers, some look nice, kind, friendly, even the kingpins, you know, they love their kids, and their multiple wives.

And we want to make sure that we, as Christians, can easily spot false teachers and how they smuggle things in. Pretty soon you begin to think, �Oh yeah, that�s what they do. There�s that little hidden compartment above the wheel well, and that�s what they do.

So we want to make sure, and I know you at No Compromise Radio, if you listen to me, you�re one of the ten listeners, I see that hand, you�ll say, �Oh, I want to know that. Because it�s important, because we want to know the full counsel of God, and if 22 out of 27 books, or 25 out of 27, whatever the number is in the New Testament, talk about false teachers, well, then we need to make sure we are up to par on that.

What 2 Peter 1 Teaches About Jesus

Now, before I get into chapter 2 of 2 Peter, I will kind of frame the conversation with this. If I only gave you 2 Peter 1, and that�s the only thing you had to learn about Jesus, what could you learn from 2 Peter 1 to learn about the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Now, the reason why I say that is because chapter 1 has a lot about Jesus. Unless Peter has denied Jesus in the past three times, as far as I can tell, he won�t again in the future. He certainly didn�t in 1 Peter.

He did not in 2 Peter. And if you�re going to know anything about false teachers and how to see false teachers smuggling in their false teaching, you�ve got to know about the real teacher, the true teacher.

What could you learn about Jesus if you only had 2 Peter chapter 1? No other books of the Bible? No other chapters of the Bible? What would you know? Now, you might say, �Well, we would know he�s this historical man and that he actually walked on earth, born in Bethlehem, grew up in Nazareth, was crucified, and he died.

Those are historical facts, I guess. You could know that outside of 2 Peter chapter 1. What could you know about Jesus theologically, though, from 2 Peter chapter 1? And that�s what we�re going to look at today on No Compromise Radio Ministry.

Now, we don�t have tons of time left, so I probably should speed up a little bit. Here�s what we could learn, not exhaustive, just a little sampler, a little appetizer. Number one, that he is the Messiah.

It says in chapter 1, verse 1, �Jesus Christ, the anointed one, the one that the Old Testament pointed to and promised, the ruling great King, the Messiah. We could learn also that he sends people to tell others about him.

This is something that should be known. Peter is called an apostle. We know that God sovereignly gives faith, obtained a faith that�s by lot, by sovereign lot, we have obtained a faith. God gives us. The Lord Jesus gives us faith, and that is of equal standing even with the apostles.

We know, therefore, that God sovereignly gives salvation, and the instrument by which we receive that, non-meritoriously, is faith. What else could we know about Jesus? Well, that he totally obeyed the law.

Talk about merit theology, he merited salvation for us, righteousness. He did everything right on earth. He was born under the law, and he completely fulfilled it. We could learn that he is the Savior.

It says, �Our God and Savior, that Jesus is God and Savior. That�s what we could learn. We could learn that he is the eternal God, the eternal Son, one essence with the Father and the Spirit, the unbegotten Father, the begotten Son.

We would know that he is the eternal one. He is God and the Savior. When you look at the Old Testament and you think about God saving Israel out of Egypt, you have to be thinking Jesus is God, because, in fact, he is.

What else could you learn about Jesus? That he is gracious, �Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. Demerited favor he gives. He gives you peace, specifically peace with God the Father, and he has reconciled us to the Father.

We think, furthermore, that there is a Trinitarian concept here, that God is one and God is three, one essence, three persons, three subsistences. I�ve been reading the Matthew Barrett book lately, Simply Trinity, excellent.

By the way, how did I fall for this whole ESV dope slap where in John, instead of saying only begotten, it just says only? Probably because some of the translators didn�t want eternal generation, eternal begottenness.

How stupid am I? Oh, but that�s another show. Golly. Another episode of I Am Dumb. Another episode of I Follow Celebrity Christians. Another episode of whatever big publishers do, we just eat it up and say, �Yum.

What else could we learn about Jesus? Well, that he gives divine power for sanctification, that�s found in verse 3. That he is a king, verse 11, because he has a kingdom. He reveals the future to Peter.

He knows the future, and he tells Peter, of course, that Peter�s going to die soon. That he�s the Lord, that he receives the majestic glory from the Father. He is the majestic glory in the Father. The great picture on the Mount of Transfiguration, where the Father says, �This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

If you only had 2 Peter 1, I think you�d get a good enough picture of the Lord Jesus so that you would say, �Anyone that comes and tries to smuggle in a doctrine contrary to this perfect God, perfect man, the God-man, Lord, Savior, Sanctifier, Prophet, Priest, King, there�s a problem.

Because you have no salvation outside of this Jesus, the God-man. If you want to make Jesus a created being, although he�s the greatest of all created being, you�re damned. That�s a false teaching.

There are reasons why this is very, very important. What you believe matters. Not just for your own soul, you don�t have to have perfect belief to get into heaven. You have to believe in the perfect Savior, that�s true.

But you can�t believe things that aren�t true about God and say, �Well, you know what? I�m going to go to heaven because he�s not really God, he�s just a God. This is going to be affecting you, because eventually you�re going to live a life that�s awful, but there�s something even more awful coming when you�re trusting in the wrong Savior.

You have to believe in the right Jesus, even though you might have a little faith, even though your faith might not be perfect, but you�ve got to have the right object of your faith to make it in. Well, my name is Mike Ebendroth, this is No Compromise Radio Ministry.

I started this show by just some random facts, and that just got me off base, that got me off target, and therefore I couldn�t even get to the main part about how do you catch people that smuggle in damning doctrines through hypocritical lie speakers.

Well, we�ll get to that, because I�m going to record one more, or maybe two more shows today, Saturday, May 15th. I�m looking forward to this October, I think I should be in Omaha, Nebraska, with my brother Pat Ebendroth.

He made it out to the wedding, so did my sister Marcy, or if you�re in New England, so didn�t my sister Marcy, that means she did. And there�s going to be a conference at Omaha Bible Church, Matthew Barrett, J .V. Fesco, myself, and Patrick James Ebendroth, the third, not the first.

I just saw someplace you can�t say �Junior� anymore in a school, because �Junior� is some kind of male deal. I think all this is going to eventually backfire. People are getting tired of cancel culture, they�re getting tired of BLM, they�re getting tired of the whole thing just jammed down our throats all the time.

We realize as Christians that we stand before the majestic glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. I�m not really thinking about anybody else. I�m thinking about me and Him, and thankful that He�s kind and merciful and gracious, and a God who loves sinners.

You can always write me, Mike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com. I�ve received lots of good letters. I think many of you have downloaded the Paul Washer Show, for those that are asking. No, he has not contacted me, nor do I think he will contact me.

So that�s that. Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio. Go to the YouTube channel as well.

Ministry Sign-Off and Church Information

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth 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 bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.