Mail Bag Tuesday

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 ministry. I am in the studio today,

Tuesday, I think it's December 7th, with Steve Cooley. Pearl Harbor Day, and you know what that means.

Well, that means the show's gonna be a real bomb, I'm not exactly sure. Or we're gonna get torpedoed somewhere along the line.

Actually, today we're taping the show the day of the show. Usually, they're two weeks in advance, three weeks in advance, but we're far enough behind now that we thought we'd tape the show today.

Listen, on a serious note, Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts has an outreach concert every

Christmas time, every Christmas season, and we call it an evening of Christmas joy. It's Friday night,

December 17th, 7 p .m., and it is a wonderful concert, all kinds of different music, from children and handbells to classical music, and I will preach the gospel there, so it is a good outreach to bring your unbelieving friends, or you can bring bling bling.

Bling bling bling. Bling, have you downloaded bling on iTunes yet? Or you can bring your unsaved friends, your saved friends, and it'll just be a wonderful time.

I feel like Ed Sullivan. It'll be a wonderful, wonderful time. Outreach Christmas concert,

December 17th, 7 p .m. at Bethlehem Bible Church. We have tickets for your friends if you'd like to call in and get some of those tickets, but you don't need one to get in.

That's December 17th, Friday, 7 p .m. We're inviting you to attend. Steve, today

I'd like to do a little Christmas -themed show, and that theme is Rudolph the

Red -Nosed Reindeer Theology. Great. And then we're gonna advance on to Frosty the

Snowman Theology, right? He's coming back someday. Whoa, isn't it interesting when you listen to the whole

Christmas Santa comparisons? My daughter, just the other day, she's nine, and she said,

Dad, those things are only true of Jesus. He knows when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake.

Yeah, and it just dawned on her. Yes, that's exactly right. They're stealing the attributes of Jesus and placing them onto Santa.

Well, and talk about trivializing things, because instead of eternal consequences, it's just a matter of whether you get something good for Christmas or not.

You know, I've never met anyone, except for my grandmother, who got something bad for Christmas, and she got some horrible thing from Santa because she was bad the day before, and actually

Santa gave her some really bad things in her stockings that I can't say on the radio. My brother used to think he always got bad things, but, you know, that was...

He was the firstborn. It must have been birth order. No, he was the second one. Oh, it's the middle thing. So you see, you just quickly change the theology.

Oh, it's not the first order, it's the second order. But you know what I learned? I learned that you're more likely to get what you want if you give your parents a list, so...

Well, the pragmatism of Pastor Steve. It worked. Now, we've got a variety of questions here today, and I think this is not necessarily

Rudolph Day. This will be mailbag, and what are some other shows out there?

How do they do their mailbag thing? They're miscellaneous for the day. What do they call that? Karnak the Magnificent?

No one under 45 is laughing. They have no idea. But everyone over 45 is laughing.

I got an email last night from actually a friend. I wonder what my enemies say, and this man said that he listened to the show,

Steve, on several interviews. I don't think it was a Tuesday show. No, he never listened to a Tuesday show, I guarantee it. It was quite boring.

We promise you that if you find Tuesdays boring, we'll give you your money back. Always biblical, always provocative, except when it's

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, then it's always boring. I just thought, boring? I thought, well, we've done 300 shows.

There's probably a few duds in there, and there's probably a few great shows in there. More than a few. Yeah. All right, listen.

I've got a couple of these questions, and so these are from our actual listeners, Steve. Yeah, because if they weren't actual listeners, could you do that?

And the answer is no. All right, you're gonna like this one. Okay. I won't read all the platitudes or thanksgivings or good job, keep it up.

So this is just the, this is the attack bag. Actually, this one's not an attack.

This is from Shane, and Shane, our listener, in Saskatchewan, right? Shane from Saskatchewan.

Call me Shane. Thank you for the show. For a couple of years after being saved, I read the New King James Bible and then switched to the

New American Standard when Amazon mixed up our order and sent me the NAS MacArthur Study Bible instead of the

New King James. We call that providence. Yes, we do. We call that hurrah for Alexandrian texts.

I found the NAS to be much more clear and readable. I'll applaud that. I recently ordered my wife the new

ESV MacArthur Study Bible. Oh, it says, shh, it's a Christmas present. Yeah, well, she'll only know if she, if you're -

Today's playing today, though. Yeah, if she's listening today, we apologize. Oh, man. For wrecking her Christmas. I will send you a free one, how about that?

After reading online, I have come to find out that the ESV does not capitalize divine pronouns, he, his, him, et cetera.

Can you comment on this? I find it extremely inconvenient. Yeah, but we were talking about this before we came on the air.

You know, is it a matter of devaluating God, devaluing? Yeah, devaluing

God or devaluing Christ, and the answer is no. And really, you know, I was thinking about it, it could just be a way of leaving the text more to the reader because that way they don't determine who the pronoun is.

Like I said, I find it usually just kind of inconvenient more than anything else. But go ahead, you were talking about the unciels.

Yeah, yeah, well, one of the things about the translations we have is, of course, for the New Testament, they are all in Greek. And a majority of the

New Testament manuscripts that we have are in small letters, minuscules. Minuscules, sorry.

Yes, sometimes they have large letters. I think there's a couple complete manuscripts with all large letters, but many, they're small letters.

And why is that? Well, you can get more information on a dead animal skin or leaf parchment with small letters than you could with large letters.

And so I don't mind that because in the New Testament, the actual manuscripts would have him when referring to God with small letters.

And so I've just opened my Bible, not randomly, but I went to Ephesians and it says, "'But now in Christ Jesus.'" And so it talks about being in Him because we were formerly far off and now we're brought near.

Then it says, "'For He Himself is our peace.'" And the NAS says, "'He' in capitals." And it makes it nice because you can find it easily.

But what Pastor Steve just said, sometimes it makes us lazy because we automatically think the translators are right in everything and sometimes they aren't.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they make me... Well, let's just put it this way. It is oftentimes better to leave you to investigate to come to your own determination than to just tell you.

Otherwise, we'd all be reading the message or the living translation or something like that.

That's right. When it comes to the NIV or even worse, the TNIV, there's an interpretive issue with the original and then they interpret it for you and you're just hoping they get it right.

At least with the NAS, they leave it purposely ambiguous so you have to do your research.

And so, in answer to the question, Shane in Muskegon. He's moving around.

The ESV is not doing this because they are theologically liberal and they are drifting away from conservative theology.

They are conservative, evangelical, Crossway's a good organization. And so, we use the

ESV here, don't we? Yes, we do. Sometimes to our chagrin. Yes, every once in a while we go, well, that was an unfortunate choice there.

But what we have to understand is short of everybody learning Greek and breaking out their

Greek New Testaments, we're going to have to wrestle with translations and textual issues.

And that's just the nature of living in an English language society.

That's correct. And we have to also deal with publishers and translators and translation committees. And so, we encourage you to A, get a literal translation.

That's King James, New King James, New American Standard. You could use English Standard Version. Get a literal translation, but don't only use that.

Get yourself a study Bible, MacArthur Study Bible, Reformation Study Bible, ESV Study Bible.

Get a concordance. What are some other things? An interlinear so you can study to show yourself approved.

So, if Paul told Timothy to do that, then it goes without saying that you should try to study the Bible as well for yourself.

And there are so many tools. I didn't come with a list of them, by the way, but there are tools even online, you know, to look at the

Greek and kind of sort it out for yourself. Well, if you go to monergism .com

or monergism .org, I can't remember which one it is. It's .org. Is it? If you go to Monergism, God Alone Working, Mono Alone, Erg Work, God Alone Works Our Salvation, they have all kinds, a virtual panoply.

A panoply? A plethora of resources there. A cornucopia. Yes, but this didn't start with P.

This is a Southern Baptist show, you know. Oh, sorry. Are we Southern Baptist? Yes, we are. We're Baptist in the

South, with the southern part of Maine. So, that's, in general, we endorse the

ESV, we endorse the NAS. I really didn't want to change from the NAS, but the way they published the

NAS, it's going to be a dying transition. It's just a marketing thing. The NAS has one to two percent, and that's where they've been locked in for the last, ever since they published it in 1977, whereas the

ESV has really made a splash, and they know how to work with you and work with the local church, and they have several different forms of the

Bible to just make it physically more attractive. Absolutely. Well, this is a zinger out of nowhere.

I'm going to make a comment to Steve and just see how he responds on No Compromise Radio. This religious leader said, "'Cheese is wholly unfit for food,' page 368 in her book."

Well, that's really sad. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Cheese might cause indigestion problems, you know, for those of us who are lactose intolerant.

Or you could go to Greece. I just got back from Greece, and you could eat a lot of feta cheese that doesn't have a lot of oily goo in it.

Yum. I ate a lot of goat cheese. Did you? All right, let me give you another comment.

"'Let not any of our ministers set an evil example "'in eating of flesh meat,' page 399."

Oh my goodness. Well, I don't have to guess. Are we in the land of Seventh -day

Adventism here? Ellen G. White, "'Let's just make this very clear "'for No Compromise Radio mailbag, "'Rudolph the

Red Nose theology. "'If there's a religion that starts by a woman, "'you need to run.'" It's bad.

I mean, we could just go right down the line from Amy Semple McPherson to Helen G.

White, or Ellen G. White, or Ellen. Her sister, Ellen.

Yeah, Mary Baker, Eddie Glover, Patterson Fry. And of course, we want to be very politically correct on this show, so we must say that any religion started by a man, you should avoid, too.

Anyway, I just am so hungry for cheese, and so hungry for some bloody steak today, some tenderloin.

Let's go have a cheeseburger for lunch. Yeah, but you know what? I didn't obey this rule here this morning from Helen R.

Ellen, depending on your translation. My ESV capitalizes Helen.

Which makes it easier to find. Eggs should not be placed upon your table.

They are an injury to your children. Well, that's right out of 2

Deuteronomy, I believe. Oh man,

I'll tell you what. Isn't it good? Isn't the Lord generous and gracious to us? Everything's been given to us to enjoy, and we acknowledge that.

The food, the eggs, the goats. I don't know if you eat a dog. Whatever you eat and enjoy.

This is the manifold grace of God. If His salvation is so great, wouldn't everything else be great, too?

When you think of the panoply of salvation, then the way He gives good gifts to His children. We serve a great

God, and don't buy into these hypocritical lie speakers, as 1

Timothy 4 calls them. Enjoy life and say, God, thank you for this coffee. It's not what goes into your mouth.

It's what comes out of your mouth. Although, you know, godly people will learn to live on lawn clippings.

I mean, this. I could use a little grass drink right now. What do they sell?

Sawgrass. Yeah, sawgrass. I mean, I'd actually drink one. I'd probably have to put some Truvia in it, or something like that.

Yeah, it was horrible. I had one once, and I, yeah. Yeah, I don't even think they sell those in Greece.

Okay, let's go back to the mailbag. My name's Mike, and I'm with Steve today. This is Tuesday. We usually talk about ecclesiology issues.

Easy for him to say. He speaks for a living. Yes, yes. I won't go into any Boy George song. We did that a few weeks ago.

Here's another emailer. And this emailer says, I'm a new listener via Wretched Radio, and we're glad to sponsor

Wretched Radio. I'm not a huge fan of Max Locato, but I do have the book,

He Chose the Nails, and the inspirational study Bible from his ministry, quite inspiring.

This is Earl, by the way, and Earl is writing from Singapore. I just heard his name mentioned alongside of other emergent and bad authors, just curious as to what the things are that he teaches that are arsenic to the

Christian reader. I don't want to be misled from the true gospel by any source, including no company from Wretched Radio.

If you have time, maybe you could explain a little bit about why he is on the authors, a list of authors to stay away from, especially the book

I think you mentioned, Fearless. I appreciate your ministry, et cetera. Earl, any comments about Max Locato in general?

Well, I mean, I have several quotes here, some of which are perfectly fine.

I think there are some problematic ones, though. Here's one. This is Max Locato.

The purpose of the Bible, salvation. I don't know that I'd necessarily agree with that, but okay, reading on.

God's highest passion is to get his children home. Hmm.

The purpose of the Bible is to proclaim God's plan and passion to save his children.

Is that true? Well, certainly God has a passion to glorify himself, and part of that glorification is through keeping his promises and Christ getting the command in eternity past to go rescue the elect, and so I just don't like to get there so directly.

It's this whole crazy love kind of thing. God's crazy about you. You're the apple of God's eye. He loves you, and he can't stop thinking about you all day long, and it just, it devalues the work of Christ and how of course he loves us like he loves his son.

Of course we're in Christ. Of course God loves us, and he's demonstrated that love, but I don't like to go straight from God the

Father to me. God loves us so much because I like to go through the finished work of Christ, and he loves us not because we're lovable, but because Christ's great sacrifice on our behalf, so I never like to go straight from God the

Father somehow loving us. I like to go through the cross. Yeah, I mean,

I just wonder if God's primary passion is in saving his children or displaying his glory, and I would tend towards displaying his glory.

Yeah, yeah, I know it's a rough day for us here on No Compromise Radio, but we'll just default to the glory of God eternally.

I think the big problem with Max Lucado, the problem is he's a good writer, and he's probably a nice man, but he is believing, although he tried to circuitously circumvent this, he teaches baptismal regeneration, and like all good

Church of Christ folks, that's what he teaches, and I don't mean they're good. I mean if they're Church of Christ people and they want to try to teach that doctrine, they teach baptismal regeneration, but they word it in such a way that the evangelicals buy it.

Right. That's the problem, and so we don't endorse Max Lucado's ministry. I'm sure he says some things that are biblical.

I'm sure people have heard Bible from him. I'm sure people have got saved because he's taught the Bible, but we can't endorse anyone who adds things to the cross because the cross was sufficient.

Jesus didn't need any human work added. Can you imagine the eternal, pure, holy work of God done, and then we have to add some kind of sinful, rotten, corrupt works to kind of finish that?

Doesn't that sound wrong? Of course it sounds wrong. Yeah, let me give you one more quote, and this kind of hit me just because it sounds much like a

Tim McGraw song that I really like. He says, if today were your last, would you do what you're doing?

In other words, right now. Or would you love more, give more, forgive more, then do so?

Forgive and give as if it were your last opportunity. Love like there's no tomorrow, and if tomorrow comes, love again.

That's just, it's very humanistic. I mean, if today were the last day of your life, what would you really want to be doing?

I'd want to be talking to all my unsaved family and friends and pleading with them one last time to receive

Christ, to believe and to repent. That's what I would want to do with my last day. Well, Steve, you're just picking and choosing, and you're just somehow taking things out of context, and he would never really say those kind of things if asked.

Okay. But this is a list of quotes. These people actually like him, you know? So this is all stuff who, they actually like him.

Well, I agree with Pastor Steve, and we would like you to discern things, and even if it was only, it's not only this, but even if it was only, pick better writers.

There are much better writers to read, theologically adept writers, and so you should spend your time reading

MacArthur and Pink and Boyce and Calvin. There's all kinds of people to read.

Why would we stoop down to the lowest common denominator? Steve, there is a reason, and I know you know this.

There's a reason why United Methodist, Roman Catholics, pagans, and evangelicals all read

Max Lucado. Well, it's because he panders to what we want to hear as human beings.

He has an overly high view of people and decidedly less than godlike view of God.

So he closes that gap by raising us up. Well, if you're listening to us today on No Compromise Radio and you like Max Lucado, well, what we would suggest that you do is ask yourself why you like him.

You know, people can write in such a way. Well, could we write a bestselling book, Steve? I don't know if we could, but I think we know the formula.

Right. You pick a title like Crazy Love and then you tweak a real God -centered love for the people in such a way that you just think, yeah, that's the way

I like to think about God. You get a good publisher and you can sell hundreds of thousands of copies. Sure, I mean, it's like Christianity translated through the voice of Oprah.

You know, it's appealing to the masses by kind of, not even, well, yeah,

I would say it's watering things down. You know, you don't want to talk about how bad the total depravity of mankind is.

You want to talk about how good people are and how God loves them so much. And it's man, man, man, man, man, very man -centered.

And we don't ever want to deny the love of God for sinful mankind. We're not denying that.

We're just saying there are other things to emphasize like Jesus and his life and his death.

And it reminded me, Steve, of an Orlando entertainment firm, and they are trying to put a ride together.

I kid you not, this was 10 years ago, but they were trying to make this ride called Ego Trip, a ride about you.

And here's what the spokesman review said. The ride, which Renaissance hopes to sell to a theme park or to operate at fairs, will use riders' names, photos, and voices to create a totally personalized experience.

Paparazzi snap away and adoring fans call their names. Riders will attend their own movie premieres.

They'll visit an art museum where they'll view paintings of themselves done by Picasso, Warhol, and Van Gogh.

They'll attend a political rally where they'll be urged to run for president and a sporting event where they'll be praised for their athletic prowess.

Finally, they'll enjoy a ticker tape parade in their honor. Now you say this is a church, right? Yeah, seriously.

Now let's just tie that in. Two last little sentences. After, Ego Stroke riders will proceed to the gift shop where they can buy all sorts of stuff emblazoned with their images.

What's everybody's favorite subject, ask the president of this company? Themselves. It could be of a church.

It could be of a local church. I picked the church because it's got the youth group that I like, it's got the music that I like, it's got the preaching that I like that is me -centered and not very long, thank you.

And it's so true. I was watching the Emergent Channel last night and it said, well, we thought we'd try to make a church, put together a church and plan a church that we would like going to.

They said it over and over and over. We are going to plan a church that we would like going to.

Yeah, I think ultimately they'd like to find a church that lets them worship themselves in a way that God might approve.

And your conscience is assuaged and your conscience is, you feel good about yourself because you've worshiped.

And you haven't worshiped Satan. You're not Anton LaVey. Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down, here

I am to say that I am, you know. We live in a self -oriented generation and we are very, very thankful that when we read the

Bible, it's not about us at all. It's about God and it's about his glory. Isn't that some song? Yeah, it's all about your glory.

Yeah, I forget the exact lyrics. Where's Charlie when we need him? Yeah, I don't know, probably at work. We are

No Compromise Radio Ministry. And is there anything else, Steve, in the last minute we'd like to talk about on this

Rudolph Reindeer Day? Well, here's what I would like to do. I would like to just encourage all of our

No Compromise listeners, when they send in emails. When they send in money. I thought you were going to say it.

Go ahead. Although we are having a budget shortfall. Oh, the last one minute we want to talk to you about our status financially.

We don't ask for donations often. No. Ed Young Jr., give us your credit card. This is how you fill out the routing form.

Yeah, but anyway, when you send in an email, I want you to just take in just a few minutes.

First of all, listen to the show first. But secondly, take a minute or two to just kind of look at it a little bit and make sure that it's biblical, that your complaint is biblical, and then run spell check, please.

We've been getting these emails and I'm glad to get them info at nocompromiseradio .com. We're glad to get them.

We've got a couple staff guys writing some responses and really write us in all sincerity. But Steve and I laugh when somebody critiques us and criticizes us for a theological issue and they cannot spell properly.

You made a mistake. And then the whole email is just chock full of mistakes. No. We do make mistakes every once in a while, by the way.

That's true. But we will go with one of our new slogans. And this is originated by Ray, one of our staff writers.

And Ray says, no co a day keeps the confusion away. We like that. Isn't that kind of nice?

Yeah, it's pithy. It's pointed. Yeah, it gets right to the zen of the issue there.

Well, my name is Mike Ebendroth and I'm in the studio today with Steve Cooley. You're my co -host and we are

No Compromise Radio. Don't forget Bethlehem Bible Church, December 17th, a free concert.

We'd love to have you. It was so great last year. Please come. 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 six. 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.