Wrath Management

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.

The Humanness of Jesus and the Image of God

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Pastor Steve is in the house. Greetings and salutations. Greetings and salutations. So you were teaching about the humanness of Jesus. He took on a complete, would it be 100 human form?

100%. Okay, that�s good. And then you were also teaching something else about just a small subject, the meaning of life or something. How did that all come about? I mean, are you having a midlife crisis or what?

No, sometimes I just, I think just in terms of, I don�t know, meganess, I don�t even know what to call it. But I just started thinking, you know, I was just contemplating being image bearers and what that really means, what it means to be an image bearer of God.

And so, I've got all kinds of topics that I think fall under that. And you know, it also goes to some of the ways I think that some of the things that Christianity is accused of. Well, you know, Christianity was used to justify slavery and segregation and, you know, being against civil rights, which, you know, some of that is true.

I mean, I read a really amazing message from Bob Jones the other day, and it was disturbing, you know, because very little Bible and lots of, let's not upset the current order of things.

When he played for the 76ers, I mean, he was a defensive genius. Yeah, Bobby Jones. Yeah, he was. Bobby Jones. I'm telling you. And when you have Daryl Dawkins and Caldwell Jones. Dr. J. Dr. J. Andrew Toney.

Maurice Cheeks. That was a team. Yeah, that was a team. They would actually beat the Celtics up pretty badly.

Yeah. So, it was pretty surprising to see Bobby Jones say these things, especially since he was, I think he was probably about three at the time.

The basketball Bobby Jones, was he, I think he was North Carolina or?

Yeah, I think it was North Carolina. I want to say that, but, you know, it could be wrong.

Talking about basketball for a minute, Steve, how about Dean Smith versus Jerry Tarkanian? I think both pretty good coaches.

Yeah. Yeah, well, in terms of actual coaching, I don't know, that's a tough one. I mean, I think Tarkanian was definitely, in my mind, he was a better recruiter, even though, you know, Smith had Michael Jordan and stuff like that.

But I mean, hey, UNLV was loaded back in those days.

Steve, in the late 70s, watching UNLV was a treat.

They were loaded. When they, you know, I was listening to, I listened to Jim Rome the other day, and he said, you know, his teams, Tarkanian's teams always played so hard. I mean, it's so, I love college basketball, but one of the things you can tell about a team is when they just give up, when they throw in the towel.

And Tarkanian's teams, they played like every minute was their last one on earth.

So yeah. Steve, when I look at our YouTube demographics, because that's the closest that we get for radio, you know, information on who listens, it's usually people who are 55 years old and over and they're male.

So we talk about those things. Well, that's just me, though.

It's our target demographic. Is me. Great. And you know, I listen, so it's good.

Blood Atonement, Wrath, and Propitiation

Steve, there's an article written by a man who says the blood atonement weakens God. Christian Piatt, P-I-A-T-T. He writes a lot of provocative things, always biblical, not necessarily, but always provocative and not in that order.

And he talks about why blood atonement theology weakens God. Now, when you just hear that title, what goes through your mind regarding wrath, propitiation, blood sacrifice?

I just think all that's out the window because a really strong God is a marshmallow God who just loves everybody.

Steve, think about it. It's just this weakening of penalty substitution and the wrath of God. Doesn't Jesus deliver us from the wrath of God and the wrath to come, 1 Thessalonians chapter 1? Yes. So, I guess, do we have a God who's a God of love more than a God of wrath?

What goes into people's thinking like this?

Well, I think he had to have his own version of the Bible, you know, like Jefferson cut out all the miracles. He could just cut out all the wrath. You know, wouldn't that be nice? Cut out all the anger and all the wrath and all the, you know, like God hates sinners in Psalm 5.

Just cut all that stuff out.

Steve, it just came to me and I don't think it was Holy Spirit driven, but it's just from my own gut kind of thing. The title of the show today is going to be called Wrath Management. Instead of anger management, instead of waste management, it's wrath management.

Wrath management.

See, I was going to suggest, you know, the Olaf-ing of God because from Frozen because, you know, like, God is supposed to be like Olaf, this big kind of just goofy lug who loves everybody, you know, and really just never sees any danger.

He's fine with summer and being melted into, you know, I mean, the God that some people would like us to worship is not only not a God at all, but he is a God who just could not affect anything and should not be worshipped by anyone.

Biblical Revelation Versus Redaction

Steve, let's talk about this from the 35 ,000-foot view first and then let's deal I prefer 40. Yeah, I know, but then sometimes the ice gets on the wings. We either accept biblical revelation for what it is, or we redact, cut, paste, smooth, soften.

What's in the heart of man? I guess it's pride that wants to say, I cannot take biblical revelation for what it is. Let me give you my redaction to that. Redaction.

Yeah. I mean, it very clearly, this guy says, why blood, atonement, theology weakens God. Well, okay. Again, what do you want to do? Excise all the examples of, I mean, what happens when Abraham takes Isaac up to the mountain?

You just go, you got to cut all that out because that shows God commanding some kind of human sacrifice. Well, come on! How could that even be a possibility? You know, God is so loving, he should have just said, you know what, Abraham, if you want to love Isaac above me, I'm not really going to make a big deal out of that.

Steve is a very smart man, Pastor Steve, Tuesday guy, and what probably you don't know on Tuesdays is I have stuff in front of me, like, you know, notes and articles and a piece of paper and all that.

Steve is armed simply with the Bible, and in this particular case, Steve did not know that the article went on to say, God called for an end to human sacrifice well before Jesus. Piat said, the story of Abraham is interpreted in many ways, including the idea that God was testing Abraham's faithfulness.

Another perspective, however, is that this was a message to non-Jews of an era, to an era who still practiced human sacrifices, that offerings, these offerings were not necessary. So you don't need them anymore.

That was the lesson. Well actually, human sacrifices to pagan gods were always an abomination, and human sacrifices to God himself were never called for. This was a matter of just, it was a test, and I don't care what Mr. Piat says.

He said, the first reason he doesn't embrace blood atonement, Jesus forgave sin while he was still alive, and so when he could say to someone, your sins are forgiven, that was before the death of himself, and so why would he have to die for sinners?

Well, I think that's pretty easy, right?

How were all the Old Testament saints saved? Jesus hadn't died yet, right? It was by faith in God, in a coming redeemer, in a coming sacrifice that would be sufficient to cover sins. So I don't see any contradiction there at all, that Jesus would forgive, he was God, he had the power to do that, but it was also because he knew what was coming.

He knew that a sacrifice was coming that would take care of sin.

Steve, how large would the Torah be if we took out all the sacrificial stuff?

I think it'd be pretty brief, and you know what? A lot of us would say, well, you know what, that's okay, Leviticus, you know, a lot of numbers, just go on, it's all right, Deuteronomy.

There are grain offerings and wave offerings and some non-blood offerings, but Steve, if we just pick three kinds of sacrifices in the Old Testament, they required blood. Adam and Eve sinned, and God had to kill an animal to cloak them, right?

Passover, there was an animal that had to be killed per each family, if it was a large enough family, and the Day of Atonement, you had the one goat that went off, or the scapegoat type of thing, and the other one that was killed for the sins of the nation.

So let's just get rid of that blood atonement.

Peter. Well, what this author really misses and what he's ultimately just kind of blind to is the fact that sin is a very serious thing. When Adam and Eve sinned, listen, there were no animals, they didn't kill anything, they themselves did not kill anything, but what they did was violate the Word of God.

He told them not to do something, they did it. And the result was not just a little slap on the wrist, the result was something had to die. And it was either them or it was going to be animals, and he killed animals and clothed them in his mercy.

And right from the very beginning, we see that sin is a serious matter. Falling short of the glory of God is something that demands a heavy penalty.

Jared Steve, I think you've hit the nail on its proverbial head, and that is to say, when you mess around with blood atonement, when you mess around with the Bible, it not only affects your view of God, but it affects your view of what man has done, that is sin.

Sin's not that bad. And you shouldn't have to really die for sin. You don't get the death penalty for one sin. I mean, come on, it's just a one sin. What's the big deal? Get over it. Well, you know what?

Everybody makes mistakes. Why can't we just be like Taylor Swift and shake it off?

Protecting God from His Own Attributes

Steve, in general, we have, I think in our society today, when it comes to predestination or reprobation or the wrath of God or blood atonement, we as a society, as an evangelical society even, I think we're trying to protect God.

We don't want to have God come across as an ogre, because if we live in, oh, let's say Manhattan, what will the intelligentsia say? What will the media say? What will the mucky mucks say? So let's kind of create a God in our own image or the image that will be more palatable to the unbelieving intellectual.

Well, yeah, they won't worship a God of, you know, of blood atonement. What they want is a God who would be comfortable with all the fine wine lists and, you know, foods that I can't pronounce and wouldn't eat in a million years because you get it from where?

You know, all that kind of, I mean, they want a sophisticated, refined, again, a God in their own image. They want him to be as erudite and, you know.

Steve, I don't know all the words, but I had a cracker last night that had figs in it and olives, dried.

See, you're eating nonsense food, you know. From Trader Joe's.

And I had some kind of mozzarella cheese that was in water, but the inside of it was creamy. It was a brugada or something like that it was called, and I thought I was high society when I was doing that.

I put some sea salt on the top. I thought that was pretty special. That's a beautiful thing. So if the Bible says that God is an avenging God, a wrathful God, I mean, just try to read Nahum tonight and say to yourself, N-A-H-U-M, you think to yourself, wait a second.

God is not so manageable. He's not so predictable. He's not so, I mean, he's dangerous.

Yeah, again, I just think it comes back to kind of a, I don't want to call it a dumbing down, but it's kind of like this idea that God needs to be refined. He needs to be presented in a civilized way, you know, because you certainly don't want a God who gets angry over little things.

I mean, come on, who can't overlook a little, you know, peccadillo here or there, you know?

Nahum 1, the Lord is a jealous and avenging God. Yahweh is avenging and wrathful. Yahweh takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.

But that's only on Monday. On Tuesdays, he's a lot nicer than that. You know, it's just kind of, it depends on the day of the week.

Steve, can't you see Christians underlining verse 3 and skipping the verse that I just read, verse 3, the Lord is slow to anger and great in power. The Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

So let's underline slow to anger. Yeah. Let's leave all the rest.

That's the part that they'd like. Sure. I mean, I could see that on the entryway to a lot of churches, the Lord is slow to anger, you know, and they ought to put a little asterisk at the end of that, you know, and then if you want the rest of it, you have to go ask the pastor.

What was the Leon Morris book about the atonement that came out years ago that dealt with some of this type of thing in the 30s? C .H. Dodd was saying that propitiation wasn't really the issue. God's wrath wasn't to be assuaged.

There was no anger of God to be placated. Jesus's death was simply expiation or removal or cleansing of sin. Oh, apostolic preaching of the cross.

You knew that, didn't you? Yes, I did. And I was like, I'm going, I'm going, okay, I'm flipping through my, you know, mental pictures. I can even see the cover.

It's like a violet cover. And That's maybe one of the best books I've read in the atonement.

I agree. Yeah, okay. I mean, I read it years ago, so it's hard for me to

The Tax Collector, the Pharisee, and the Wrath of God

So, when the tax collector and the Pharisee, they're praying, basically the Pharisee's praying to himself, the tax collector says, you know, Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner. He's talking about God, you have wrath towards sin, and please have that wrath assuaged.

Yeah, I think many in today's church would be, they wouldn't be the Pharisee, but they would be saying, you know, God, I thank you that you're not like the God of the Bible. You know? Oh, hey, very good.

Steve, you should have your own show. That is show worthy. Well, I just came up with that. Right. But it's true, right? God, I thank you that you're not like the God of the Bible. I mean, they would never talk that way, but that's what they do, right?

They wouldn't say it exactly like that, but they pretty much, one by one, they get rid of his attributes that they don't like, and so they're wound up with, you know, it's like the attribute wheel, right?

They spin the wheel and it comes up and they go, justice. Now, can we replace it?

See, that last comment you had about how the modern day person prays was so excellent. I think for the next, like, nine minutes, I'm just going to listen. You just take it away.

All right, well, let me wax eloquent about my...

Propitiation in Romans 3 and the Death of Christ

Steve, it says in Romans 3 as well, in one of the key places in all the Bible where God reveals what he has done through Jesus Christ, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received, not by faith.

It must not say that, Steve. It must be to be received by the intelligentsia in the blogosphere.

Well, you know, to be granted in love, well, it just ignores the whole word, well, of course, our friend here, Mr. Piat, our good friend, I think he's going to be on the show never. But anyway, if he doesn't like the whole blood atonement thing, well, what is propitiation?

That's exactly what it is, right? It's the death of Jesus, the bloody death of Jesus to satisfy the wrath of God. And, you know, again, if you don't like blood atonement theory, if you don't like all the talk about death and sacrifice and all these kinds of things, well, you're going to wind up with a really small Bible and not just in the Old Testament, in the New Testament.

Because if you remove the death of Christ, his sacrificial death, you're going to wind up with, you know, probably, I don't know, 40 pages of history, but you're not going to wind up with any theology left.

No wonder, Steve, people begin to have God evolve over time, because it's hard to excise all the blood passages out of the scripture, because you can get rid of propitiation and just jam in expiation.

But when you have these words, blood, what are you going to do with them? So you say, well, God was on a trajectory, and he was a little, he was more tribal back in those days, more primeval, and then now he's more sophisticated.

Yeah, well, here's the thing. God, we know from scripture, God doesn't change, right? But our ideas or our projections of him do change. Why? Because as we become more refined, I mean, you know, the God of the Bible was great 2000 years ago because he seemed probably on the cutting edge, you know, compared to most gods, he was pretty good.

But nowadays, boy, he seems, he seems really old-fashioned. And, but that's not a reflection on God, that's a reflection on our society and what we think is fine. I mean, every day I hear things on the news and I'm just like, how does anybody think that that's normal or rational?

I mean, it's become, I watched this debate on, not to hijack the topic here, but watch this little mini debate about spanking the other day, and when one of the people on the show said that they spanked their kids, the other people on the show looked at him like, man, like he was a flesh-eating maniac, you know?

And I'm just like, we've come a long way in a short period of time.

Mike Abendroth with Steve Cooley today on No Compromise Radio. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com. The Tuesday Guy is Steve's Twitter handle, mine is at nocoradio. And Steve, if you think about the atonement of Christ, such a key,.

Pivotable, pivotable... Yeah, well, just keep saying it. It's a good word. That should be today's title, pivotable.

It's such a central doctrine to Christianity, substitutionary atonement, blood atonement. No wonder we have people attacking it and saying, essentially, I think Christian would love something like the moral influence theory, where it just was an act of love, that Jesus died on the cross, and we look at that act of love, and it makes us want to be, you know, better lovers.

Pete Love loving and kind and wonderful people. I mean, I was watching, I watched this little snippet of news where Tim Tebow's holding this, like, Valentine's dance for all these special needs kids. And, you know, he goes, I just want these kids to think that for one day, you know, they're the king and queen and God loves them and all that kind of thing.

And I thought, that's really nice. But it's not going to save one soul. It's very nice. And I'm not against Tim Tebow. Don't, you know, don't blow up my Twitter account with that. I'm not against him.

I'm just like, being nice and doing nice is not the gospel. You know, the God of love is not a complete picture of God. We have to have the God of justice, the God of wrath, the God of, the God who's against sin, all these things are all true.

And we have to have an entire, an accurate picture of things.

Hebrews nine, nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood, not his own. For then he would have to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.

But as it is, he appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Pete. Can you just read that again without the word sacrifice or blood? I think that would be very helpful for us.

Paul. Yeah. Well, just as it is appointed for a man wants to retire, and then after that comes the rest home.

Pete. He retired on the cross. He didn't die on the cross. He just retired.

Paul. And of course, when we survey the wondrous cross, we can think that demands my love, my all, but the writer's not saying. It's just the love of God, moral influence only. I mean, he would believe in substitutionary atonement as well.

Pete. Yes. But I mean, when you think about Christ dying for your sins, how can you think, well, that's good, but I don't have, there's no response on my part. You know, just Jesus died for my sins. That's all I need.

I mean, that's just crazy, right? We would never say that.

Paul. It says, consequently, Christ came, Hebrews 10, into the world, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure.

Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. Can you imagine?

Pete. See, he's against that.

Paul. Well, the verse goes on to say that he is going to have his body offered, Jesus Christ, once for all, Hebrews 10. And so, what does this tell us about the eternal plan of God to have the Son be a substitutionary atoning sacrifice for sinners?

Pete. Well, it tells us that was always the plan, right? That Jesus came to earth willingly to die a bloody sacrificial death. Why? Because that was the price that had to be paid to redeem us from the wrath of God to buy us out of that.

Paul Steve, I think you're wise to highlight the wrath of God because there are bloodier ways to kill people. For execution, you could make it bloodier than crucifixion. And so, when we think of blood, you can think of a word that's like a zip drive filled with all kinds of theological meaning, and that is the wrath of God is poured out on Jesus.

Of course, he bled on the cross, but this is a blood sacrifice, it's a substitutionary sacrifice, and that's what the authors of scripture, human authors are trying to highlight.

Pete. Well, because the propitiation, you know, his death of being a propitiation satisfied the wrath of God. That's the whole point. And you know, where do we want the wrath of God to be? On us forever in hell?

I mean, I was just reading, you know, this book on Hell by Clint Archer, and you just think, okay, is that where we want it, or do we want it? Ultimately, yes, we're thankful that Christ died for us on the cross and bore the wrath for us so that we don't have to bear it.

Pete Steve, I think if Clint writes any book, people should probably buy that book in, like, boxes. Pete Yeah, multiple copies. Pete Give it to their friends. What's the name of the book, by the way, Clint's book on Hell?

Pete A Visitor's Tour Guide to Hell, I believe, is something along those lines. Pete Kind of a neat deal because it's written.

By Clint and evangelical, and he agreed not to, he would have it published, but they could not change any of his theology, and it's published by a secular publisher. Pete. Is it really?

Pete Yeah. Pete See, I would have liked to have, you know, seen, I mean, I was going to say, I would have liked to have done some of the artwork, but then it would have been terrible. But, you know, some sprucing up there that would have been spiffy, but yeah, it's a great book.

Pete. Mike Avendroth with Steve Cooley here.

This is No Compromise Radio. See you at nocompromiseradio .com, or you can email us, our Twitter, our YouTube 90. Pete Tweet us.