Interracial Marriage Ban

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Mike Abendroth here, sitting in the beautiful downtown

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Burbank studios. I actually wish today I was in Burbank. Probably would be warmer for a bike ride and probably would be windier.

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I guess there was a lot of wind there. Today is, I don't know, December 4th or something, my time.

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But this is probably being played in, I bet you January. Welcome to the new year, 2012.

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Boy, the last few weeks went fast, didn't they? You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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We're glad to be here on WVNE in probably two, let's see, September, October, November, coming up on two and a half years of No Compromise Radio ministry.

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I love it when I go to Bethlehem Bible Church on a Sunday and people are visiting and I'll go up and say, hi, my name is

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Mike Abendroth. And they'll give me a smile like we know, we listen to you on radio. And then

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I say, I'm nicer in person. So if you'd like to write us, you can.

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Actually, if you'd like to call us, we've actually had some people call. Got a young man, Adam Call from Nebraska.

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And he called and said, would you please call me? I'd like some more information about Roman Catholicism because I have family who are

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Roman Catholics and I'd like to know how to tell them about the good news of Christ Jesus and grace alone.

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And so I thought, I'm never calling that guy. He's below me. I'm a superstar. Of course

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I didn't do that. I called him gladly and it was great to talk to him, young man from Aurora, Nebraska.

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I just have been to Aurora, drove past Aurora, just seriously, just a few weeks ago for a pastor's conference in Connie, Connie.

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So I do have an interesting email from a listener, this listener, whose name is

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Pam. She said, I went to pick up pizza and encountered a nice Salvation Army guy.

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So this is the time of year, of course, especially when this was written and taped that it was guys by the red pails and they're trying to get some money for Salvation Army.

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I told him, William Booth, that's the guy who started Salvation Army, was a great minister of the gospel and he founded

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Salvation Army for the gospel proclamation. The man said, I am doing the latter.

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I said, what is the gospel? And he said, I go to the Seventh -day

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Adventist church. I said, I didn't ask you where you go to church. I asked you what the gospel is.

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See, I like it when no -compromise radio listeners have a no -compromise strategy, have an edge, kind of edgy.

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I like that. See, isn't that good? I didn't ask you where you went to church. So if you ask people what the gospel is and they tell you,

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I'm a Lutheran, I didn't ask you what denomination you were. What is the gospel? He admitted that he did not know exactly, but he believed in Jesus.

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No creed, but Jesus. So what would you do? If you ran into that situation, what would you do?

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Well, you should probably, what? Tell him what the good news is. That's one of the reasons we exist.

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Of course, ultimately, and under the big umbrella, we exist to give God glory.

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That's why we exist. And we can give God glory by giving him thanks. We can give

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God glory by ministering the local church. We can give God glory through a variety of ways, but one is, very high on the list, is gospel preaching, evangelism.

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And one of these days, we're probably gonna run into an unregenerate elect person, and God will grant them faith through the preaching.

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Not because of what we've done, but freely, graciously, sovereignly,

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God uses preaching. So I go back to the email, No Compromise Radio Ministry. I told him what the gospel was and that repenting of sin and trusting

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Christ is the response to the gospel. How good is that? The gospel isn't the law, do something and live.

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The gospel is Christ has done something so that you can live. Jesus Christ, if you look at 1

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Corinthians 15, as we talked about in part one, not that long ago, about the gospel. I better get to part two.

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Actually, it's been so long, I don't know where I ended. I have my notes right here in front of me, but I don't know where I ended and where I should begin.

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This is probably a good introduction for the gospel message, but I'm gonna talk about something else I think today.

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I think I am, I don't know. We're just gonna see how long I can milk this. I think

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I used to be much more didactic when the ministry first started. Let's teach you about this, let's teach you about that.

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I probably should go back to that. I think once I started going on Wretched Radio, filling in for Todd Friel, then it was just chaos began.

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It's just ultimate chaos. Tuesdays are now Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays as well, where we just,

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I don't know, is this a stream of consciousness Wednesday? So the gospel, if you look at 1

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Corinthians 15, talks about Jesus. He is the subject.

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We are the recipients, but we're not on stage. Jesus is the one who does everything.

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And so Christ dies for our sins, according to the scriptures, right?

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He is raised from the dead, according to the scriptures. And then he begins to appear to people.

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And it's set up in such a way that there could be continuity between the first people who saw

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Jesus and his appearing, raised from the dead, to people that were probably alive during the time that Paul wrote to the

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Corinthians in his first inspired letter. There was another letter before that, but here we have the four letters we have,

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I think, to the Corinthians. But this is the first inspired one, which we call 1

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Corinthians. So we have Jesus historically dying, Jesus theologically dying, substitute, sacrifice, propitiating sacrifice in our place, on our behalf, in our stead, substitutionary, penal substitution.

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And he's raised from the dead, confirming the fact that the Father accepted the sacrifice. Jesus didn't die for his own sins.

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He died for our sins. And here it doesn't even say Jesus died. That would have been focusing on his person, that he was a representative, he was fully human.

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And that's true. But the wonderful news of the gospel is that God -man died for us.

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Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one. What king does that? It's one thing to lay down your life,

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Romans 5 says, for a good man. Somebody might do that. But how about laying down your life for ungodly, for sinners, for the helpless, for rebels, for traitors, for treasonous people.

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I don't know if you like treasonous people when you think of international affairs, but we are the treasonous ones.

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And God, in his magnifying love, sent his son that he might redeem sinners like us.

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So what's the response to that? Well, no response is a response.

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But the biblical response to such good news is affirmation, trust, thinking now those right thoughts about God, believing, taking

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God at his word, repenting, trusting, following such a great

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God. But the good news isn't repent and believe. The good news is what happened back in Calvary.

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And that's exactly what Paul highlights in 1 Corinthians 15. That's what he underlines in Galatians 1 .4.

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And so here this listener, Pam, said, I told him the gospel, what the gospel was, and repenting and trusting was the response to that.

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I gave him a tract and told him he could read it to understand sin and why he needed saving.

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And it was really important that he knew what the gospel was so that he could trust the Christ of the gospel. Excellent evangelism, excellent evangelism.

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Not trying to get results, not trying to close the deal, not trying to get somebody to come to a particular church.

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I didn't ask you what church you went to. Who is Jesus and what did he accomplish 2 ,000 years ago?

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Going back to the email here, he said, this is great. I will give this to my boss. Then the next line from Pam, I said, no, that is for you.

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Here's another one for your boss. Anyway, then she has a few closing comments.

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So today in No Compromise Radio Ministry, I think that's good advice. It's good advice to tell people what the gospel is because so many people today assume they know it and they don't.

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They don't know it. They're in churches across the country that assume the gospel and they think the gospel is accept

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Jesus in your heart, but that's not the gospel. Listen to the introduction of Calvin's, a translation of the

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Bible that Calvin put in as an introduction. Great insight as we think about the priority of the gospel.

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Without the gospel, everything is useless and vain. Without the gospel, we are not

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Christians. Without the gospel, all riches is poverty, all wisdom, folly before God.

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Strength is weakness and all the justice of man is under the condemnation of God. But by the knowledge of the gospel, we are made children of God, brothers of Jesus Christ, fellow townsmen with the saints, citizens of the kingdom of heaven, heirs of God with Jesus Christ, by whom the poor are made rich, the weak strong, the fools wise, the sinners justified, the desolate comforted, the doubting sure and slaves free.

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Before I read the rest by Calvin, when you say, I don't like John Calvin, I don't like Calvinism, I don't want any of that reform stuff in Calvin.

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If I didn't tell you who just said that, you would be going, do you know what? Thank you for reveling in the grace of Jesus Christ.

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That is wonderful. Wunderbar. The gospel is the word of life and truth.

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It is the power of God for salvation of all those who believe and the key to the knowledge of God, which opens the door of the kingdom of heaven to the faithful by releasing them from sins and closes it to the unbelievers, binding them in their sins.

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Blessed are all they who hear the gospel and keep it, for in this way they show that they are children of God.

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Woe to those who do not hear it and follow it or who will not hear it and follow it because they are the children of the devil.

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Excellent, excellent description of what's going on in the mind of God when it comes to the gospel.

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Okay, no compromise radio ministry, just sit and let that sink in for a second while I have some Pete's coffee. Once a month when the

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Pete's coffee arrives to the house, to the homestead, that is excellent. All right, what else do

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I wanna talk about today? I'm cleaning up my desk here and no compromise radio ministry. Don't forget you can write.

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I just got a good email from Roger Patterson. Patterson, he works at Answers in Genesis and he was talking about the law.

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We'll get to that question about the law and gospel. Another day, here is from Fox News sitting on my desk, published

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November 30th, 2011. Kentucky Church, those two words go together.

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I guess they do. They have churches in Kentucky, I heard. Daniel Boone Memorial Church, sorry.

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No, Kentucky Church bans interracial couples from joining congregation.

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What do you think of that? What do you think of interracial couples? Is it biblical?

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Would you advise against it? When you see it, what are your responses? Now in our day and age in 2000 and probably this will play in 2012,

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I think we've become much more accustomed to different ethnic groups marrying and so it is commonplace in media, culture, large cities, maybe not so common in smaller cities, rural cities,

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Kentucky cities, but it is more common. And when things are more common, then people begin to just accept that.

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Hence, when homosexuality is just out and about now and it's in our face in movies and media and TV and every place else, evangelicals as well, they are more accepting of it.

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Now, that is just an illustration. I'm not trying to say it's apples to apples comparison. But my question to you again is, if you have a daughter and you're white and that daughter says,

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I'd like to marry a black man, Chinese man, an Indian man, what is your advice?

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What do you say? How do you go about it? If you are black and your black daughter says,

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I'd like to marry a white man, what do you do? How do you go about figuring out a scriptural response?

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So today in No Compromise Radio Ministry, this is giving us a good springboard to talk about the issue of prejudice and discrimination.

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So, is there a text that we could go to? How do you go about it? Let me read a little bit more from this and then we can work through the issue.

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A tiny Appalachian church in Pike County, I'm about ready to read snake handling here in a second, has voted to ban interracial couples from joining its flock, pitting members against each other in an argument over race.

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Now, the bad news is this is just to sell newspaper stuff. This is just to sell Fox News. This is a tiny little church.

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The church membership voted nine to six, 35 to 40 people attend and nine to six was the vote.

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And so this is, I'm sure you can find aberrations in all kinds of things, but it brings up an interesting topic for our show today.

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Now, listen to the name of the church, very, very, very fascinating,

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I was gonna say. Members at the Golnare Free Will Baptist Church, I kid you not, they probably voted of their free will too, voted

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Sunday on the resolution which says the church, quote, does not condone interracial marriage, end quote.

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Now, why would a church ever do that? Why would a church do that? In light of James chapter two, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our

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Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, compared to the Lord of glory, Shekinah glory, burning glory,

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Isaiah chapter six glory where Jesus Christ is seated at the throne of God. He is

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God almighty. And when you see him, you see your sin like Isaiah did. When you see the glory of God, you mean to tell me you're thinking about other people's skin color?

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You're talking about what their hair is like? And is it the same texture as yours?

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Same facial features, eyes, forehead, ears, nose, mouth?

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You're not looking at anybody else, or at least if you are, you're not seeing the real God of glory because in comparison to him, we are all equally laid prostate, prostrate, prostrate.

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That's what I'm after. Keep telling me I'm getting older. We are equal as creatures, as image bearers, as finite, sinful.

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And so what does James say, mean when he says, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our

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Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. And the context there in James chapter two is riches, but I think it applies to more than just rich people and poor people and how they look.

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So today, no compromise radio ministry. I do not care if you are a single person and you say to yourself,

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I would prefer to marry someone of my own race. I think that's okay.

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So now you can marry somebody of the human race. Reminds me of Darrell Gates during the riots in Los Angeles when

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I was there. I was attending Grace Community Church as a member and Darrell Gates' wife got baptized on a

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Sunday night, I remember. And Darrell was there, not professing to believe in Christ, but there to support his wife.

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And I remember when Darrell Gates said the problem, this is right after the Rodney King debacle. He said, the problem with the

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LAPD is we hire people from the wrong race. And then he adjusted that in possibly incendiary comment by saying the human race.

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There are bad apples in the human race. And so he said, you know what? There's bad apples of every race.

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And that's exactly true. No race is perfect when it comes to obedience. We're all fallen and we're all, you know,

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Adam is our father. He was the public person. He was the common man. And we are hanging on, as Thomas Goodwin said, on his girdle.

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That is to say we were declared sinful based on Adam's first sin.

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And then by consequence, naturally we generate sinners. So back to the big picture.

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If you prefer by preference to marry someone of your own race, I don't have any problem with that.

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You're not forced to marry. The Bible doesn't force you. If you're from Turkey to marry someone from New Zealand, you're not forced to do that.

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You're a Maori in New Zealand and you're not forced to marry a white person in New Zealand. That's never the issue.

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But I'm asking the question when it looks at this free will Baptist church in Kentucky, does a church ban something that's not banned in the

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Bible? Now I grew up in the 60s and 70s where we had busing.

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And I remember my parents talking about busing. And I went to a school that was in pretty much an all white neighborhood.

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And on the basketball team and the football team, I was probably one of the few white people. And we had a lot of black students bused in from different part of town.

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And I grew up with parents who weren't Christians. My grandparents weren't Christians. And when we had neighbors who moved into our white suburb, our next door neighbors were people of military association and strategic air force command and the air force base there in Nebraska, Offutt Air Force, I think it's called

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Offutt, used to be. SAC, when black neighbors moved in, the

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Floyds were their names. And when they moved in, it caused a major uproar in the neighborhood. Oh, the housing prices are gonna go down in value.

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It was very enlightening when there was a huge flood and there was a ditch drainage area out in front.

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They've since closed that over because it was not safe. But a white boy slipped in and was literally one foot away from going under this girder and drowning.

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And Mr. Floyd next door had run down to save him and at his own peril, snatched the boy to safety.

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But that's just the culture I grew up in. And so feed that into my already depraved soul.

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And I have to say that before I was a Christian, early on, and I'm not blaming my environment,

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I'm not blaming my grandparents or my parents or anything like that, but I was a racist. I was prejudiced against people who didn't look like me.

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And if I saw a white and a black who were gonna get married, I thought wrongly about it.

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But now I've repented because I see things clearly through the scriptures. What does the Bible say?

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And I'm not to show any partiality. Actually, I love, I can say this with all honesty,

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I love different cultures and I love it when people don't look like me, yet we worship the same

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God. I'm glad Jesus died not just for Jews only, but for Gentiles as well. And when I see other

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Gentiles who have olive colored skin, or darker skin, or whiter skin,

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I rejoice that we can serve Jesus Christ, the great God. And I don't have a picture of Jesus in my office that looks

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Aryan. That's not with an I, I really wouldn't want an, can you imagine an

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Aryan, Aryan Jesus? That would mean Jesus wasn't God, but he was white. I believe in Jesus, the

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Jewish man, who was eternal God as well. But anyway, here's this Kentucky church.

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It did say, it's been a non -issue with us, asking that many interracial couples attend free will

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Baptist churches. He said that Pike County Church acted on its own. This is the National Association of Free Will Baptists in Antioch, Tennessee.

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Hopefully it's corrected quickly, this man said. Couple visited and they were biracial and her boyfriend was a different color, blah, blah, blah.

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So when I look at James 2, I say to myself, how do

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I fulfill the royal law of God? If you really fulfill the royal law, according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well.

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But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.

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For whoever keeps the whole law, but fails in one point, has become accountable for all of it.

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For he who said, do not commit adultery, also said, do not murder. If you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.

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So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.

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Mercy triumphs over judgment. So today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, if you are a racist, you need to see the cross properly and your own sin properly.

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You need to have no partiality. You need to be able to serve and minister to people that don't look like you.

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I know human nature and we like people who are like us, but we need to love our neighbor and we need to make sure that the churches, when we have people come into the church, if it's an all white church, pretty close to all white, and other people come in with different colored skin as image bearers, we better love them.

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I've been in all black churches and I have felt great love by the people as I have seen and experienced real love shown to me.

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I was in Zambia not too long ago, not too many white people in Zambia, and we are all

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Gentiles saved by the grace of God. And so when people say to me, well, would I let my daughters marry somebody who weren't the same color?

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Of course, if they're born again, if they've always been a man and if they're

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Calvinist, of course I would. Why wouldn't I? I would be a racist sinner if I did that and I don't like that kind of sin.

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That's an ugly sin to me. And so since I used to be that kind of sinner and prejudice and showing discrimination, may

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God forbid that I do it now. I want to love all kinds of people and there's nothing like a church that has different backgrounds and people get to know each other and we all worship the same

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Lord, the Jesus Christ, because compared to him, the Lord of glory, James 2, verse one, we are nothing.

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And so we don't have to worry about this nonsense like in Kentucky, where we say, for the glory of God, this other person's a

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Christian, we'll marry them. And Calvinism helps a little bit though. NoCompromiseRadio .com.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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