Cameron Buettel Interview

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 Avendroth.

Cameron Buettel’s Background and Ministry at Grace to You

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Avendroth, and I'm your host today. We try to point you to the one who's never compromised. Sadly, I've compromised, and I think to date so far, all of my guests have compromised as well.

But we look to Christ Jesus, the one who didn't compromise, and we like to talk about biblical subjects in a provocative way. One of my stalkers in ministry is on the phone now. Cameron, welcome to No Compromise Radio.

Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me on. Cameron Buttel has a blog spot called OnceUponACross .blogspot .com, and you, the listener, ought to read this blog with some great articles. Cameron and I are friends, and how did we meet?

What happened? Tell the listeners the background of how we got together for gospel ministry.

I was always a regular wretched listener. I've spent five years of my life living in Scandinavia. My wife is Danish, and I had to live a lot of my Christian life voyeuristically, Mike. And you're one of the best people to have a voyeuristic friendship with.

I was a regular at Redshoot, started recommending No Compromise. I started downloading the podcast, and you were my companion on many a long, long night on my bicycle as I rode to the factory where I worked.

Well, see, I like the gospel coalition between yourself and me. Isn't that nice? We like the gospel coalition, see? Our coalition. Yeah, and we even think it's worth defending. That's right. Cameron, tell the listeners a little bit about you.

You're currently a seminary student at the Master's Seminary. What else is going on in your life?

At the moment I work at Grace to You as a research and internet ministry assistant, just helping out with different things, getting stuff together for some of the guys who write there, and we're currently living in California, and I'm enjoying having my body defrost after five years of living in the tundra.

Rob Bell, Universalism, and the Apologetics Night That Sparked the Conversation

Now, your accent, of course, isn't from the Netherlands. Tell us about your accent, and then tell us about the ministry you had in the Dane country. Well...

Georgia, I think. Sorry? Georgia, I think. So, yeah, I originate from Australia. I grew up in a little outback town in Australia. My time, I spent ten years in the Air Force and ended up spending a lot of my adult life in one of the main cities on the coast, Brisbane, and I guess God graciously saved me, but in some bad church situations, and because of that, God, through His Word, started to lead me more and more into the truth, and so I started to track down better and better places to drink from, should we say, and the internet played a big part in that, too, coming up with friends who I evangelized with, and they started pointing me to a lot of different places to feed from, and one of those, of course, was John MacArthur, Grace to You, and so it was kind of like all of a sudden I was getting all these questions answered that I'd been asking but no one would answer for me.

Well, Cameron, it's an amazing thing. What are you going to do in the future? Your life is pretty much made now. God saved you, you work at Grace to You, and you're on No Compromise Radio. I mean, is there anything left for you to live for?

Yeah, well, yes.

The best part of all is that John MacArthur and Phil Johnson sometimes have hallway conversations outside my office.

That is very, very good. Now, do you quick turn on your recorder on your smartphone to get that recorded?

When that happens, I actually am not working.

Cameron, tell us a little bit about your blog site and the Rob Bell video that somehow catapulted you into many people's living rooms.

Yeah, that's what my time in Australia, I was in a church, I was a bit in the dark about a lot of things, but I was getting a pretty basic understanding of the gospel. And a lot of the young people watching these Rob Bell NUMA videos, I knew nothing about it.

But I got very disturbed when I saw one when he was teaching that God has faith in you and that we need to believe in ourselves. And that's just turning the gospel upside down. I started to investigate him more and found out that this guy is a universalist.

This guy just denies so many fundamental issues of the Christian faith, and he's actually quite hostile to them. And it's a shame that it took Loveling's book for people to get upset, because he really, he laid out all of the, most of the things he says in Loveling's, he laid out already in his book Velvet Elvis, which was maybe seven years earlier than that.

So there was an apologetics night at our church, and I decided, I got asked to speak for 10 minutes on something that sounds right, but isn't. So I didn't really let on too strong what I was going to do, but I basically played two minutes of Rob Bell and then spent 10 minutes just tearing it to shreds.

And it is on YouTube and you can see it, and I say that because it adds context to the whole thing. It was quite tense that night, because I was basically coming hard against the guy whose DVD was in the discipleship packs that the church gave out.

And Cameron, after you did that, behind the scenes, did they shake you down like they would at Stephen Furtick's church, or what'd they do?

Well, Stephen Furtick would probably get one of his minders to do that. But at my church, people generally were silent. There was a lot of talking in other circles, but people sort of avoided me. I came ready.

I came ready to rumble, but no one really took me on. One of the pastors said, you realize that that is the DVD that we give in our discipleship packs? And I just looked at him and said, well, you'd better get rid of it then, hadn't you?

Why Christians Must Expose False Teachers

See, that's why you're a perfect guest for No Compromise Radio. Cameron, let's think big picture for a little bit as people are listening today. Tell us why we should even bother, because it seems so unloving in our day and age, in this post-Christian society.

Why would we even stand up and critique false teachers? Isn't that unloving? And what does the New Testament say about false teachers? And then on the flip side, what does that tell us about our view of the truth and the gospel?

Well, the popular mantra, Mike, isn't it, is doctrine divides. That's a popular cliché. But in fact, that's the opposite of what the Scripture teaches. Romans 16, 17, in the King James, it says to mark those who cause divisions contrary to the doctrine you have learned, and avoid them.

So it says that those who cause divisions are those who teach false doctrine. And true unity is when we come together, united, in the core truth of our Christian faith. Of course, there's always going to be things we differ on.

But someone like Rob Bell, when you start assaulting the very gospel itself and the means by which sinners are saved, we cannot exercise anything but hostility towards that. That is the correct New Testament approach.

Paul said very strongly in Galatians 1, 8 and 9, you know, he said, if anyone preaches any other gospel than that of the Liberties, let him be accursed. He anathematizes them. And in fact, he feels so strongly about it, he repeats himself in the next verse.

Cameron, do you think men at Master's Seminary have, rightly or wrongly, or maybe someplace in between, have been accused of trying to flame false teachers too much? I mean, yeah, once in a while, okay, but enough is enough.

Do you think it's a fair characterization or a false one for Master's Seminary students and graduates?

Now, I think, you know, for the Master's Seminary, but he's sort of gone off on his Where you're listening to No Compromise Radio, Cameron Butel is on the line, onceuponacross .blogspot .com.

If you'd like to access some of his articles. And I think I'd like to do that now. Cameron and I were at the Shepherds Conference talking together, having a coffee together. I think it was a large Australian coffee.

And by the way, Cameron, since I'm in New England, when you have your accent and you quote Romans 16, and you say to mark, M-A-R-K, but you say to mock them, then see, that's perfect New England English.

So it works out perfectly.

Yeah, well, you know, my Australian peers. Yeah.

Oh, okay. I think you learned that at the Master's Seminary in hysterical theology. That's true. So you and I were talking about false teachers, and you said something like, you might be a false teacher if would be a good radio show.

And I said, perfect, make it into a blogspot or something. I don't know how the conversation went down. But in fact, on your blog, March 7th, you might be a false teacher if. And so since this is kind of an audition show for you, in case we have to bring you back again sometime, we have to get to the bottom of the barrel.

I'm hoping you'll make me Thursday guy. Okay.

Well, since Tuesday guy on Saturdays on sabbatical, you never know exactly what will happen. And so let's just pretend like you're Steve on Tuesday, and then I'm Mike on Tuesday. And so I'll just tell you what you wrote.

But what I want you to do is I want you to run with it. Okay. You might be a false teacher if. Ready? Can you do that? Yep. Okay. You might be a false teacher if Oprah invites you onto her show. Oh, who could?

All right. I don't know, Mike. I mean, that's not for me to say. I just want to give you a boost. I think, you know, that if someone like Oprah, who is, well, very universalistic and hostile to the Christian gospel and the exclusivity of Christ, you know, that should raise an alarm bell with what you must be teaching.

And if you go on the show and she applauds what you're saying, that should be even bigger red light. And we have seen some people do that, haven't we, Mike?

Well, we sure have. How about this one, Cameron? This one made me laugh pretty much out loud. You might be a false teacher if your last name is also a monetary currency. Who could that be, Mike? Creflo Dollar.

Now, hasn't he denied a literal hell as well? That's a kind of a common deal these days.

I don't know about that, but I know that he likes to dance on money. And, of course, he also has his little gods doctrine, you know, ascribing, calling us as little gods.

Now, just because people have a lower view of God, they're not Calvinistic or Reformed, we're not saying they are all Unitarians or Universalists. But it's interesting, Cameron, I just was studying a man named Ebenezer Gay, and he was in the late 1600s and early 1700s.

He preached from one pulpit for 69 years here in New England. And he became the first Unitarian minister in all of New England because he couldn't wrap his mind around the federal headship of Adam. And he basically said, I would not have eaten the fruit if I was in the garden.

And then he rejected the Trinity because he couldn't understand it. What do we do with doctrines that we can't understand but are patently obvious in the Bible?

Well, not so much that we don't know it. It's when you make a concerted effort to reject that doctrine. I think, you know, I mean, we're not going to have every doctrine down. I mean, I always maintain, for example, that the thief on the cross was a better theologian than N .T. Wright, not because he had justification nailed, but he understood that he could do nothing to save himself, and he recognized the lordship of Christ.

And he was grieved over his sin. He was repentant. He understood that he needed someone to save him. He could do nothing of himself. And so even though that thief did not understand that, he understood.

He was not, he embraced what was true. He understood what he needed to be saved, and he did not oppose what was true. And you get someone like T .D. Jakes or this Unitarian minister, and they are making conscientious opposition to this doctrine.

They are conscientiously hostile and opposing it. And that is just off limits as a Christian.

N. T. Wright, the Atonement, and the Danger of Vagueness

So when you wrote in your blog post, you might be a false teacher if you think you are the one who has finally figured out what the Apostle Paul was all about. That would be N .T. Wright, I guess?

Yeah, yeah, Mike. And I've got to say, thank you for the program you did on N .T. Wright. It is a real problem because he is so hazy and vague, you know. God is not the author of confusion, but N .T. Wright could possibly be.

And I think when N .T. Wright, I would like to see some people really question N .T. Wright on what he doesn't say. The problem I have with N .T. Wright is he never talks about the Gospel clearly. He never talks about sin in an individual sense.

He never really talks about salvation in an individual sense. He never clearly articulates the Atonement. In fact, he clearly favours views other than the penal substitutionary view of the Atonement that Christ died as a propitiation in our place to appease God's wrath.

He doesn't like that. And he can say all he likes, but the fact is he endorsed Steve Chalky's book, and he never retracted that endorsement. So, I think he's showing his true colours there.

Well, it's interesting, Cameron, when I'm reading 2 Peter 2, false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies.

Isn't it true, at least generally, that when false teachers slip into churches, they're smart enough, maybe energized by Satan, they're smart enough to know better than to just blatantly say from the get-go, Jesus isn't God, I don't believe in the Trinity, I don't deny substitutionary Atonement.

But they begin to get into the church, and then as they're in the church for a while, then they can let the noose loosen up a little bit before it's cinched tightly.

Yep, that's right. Well, they never start denominations, they infiltrate and corrupt them.

Yeah, I think it was MacArthur who said, liberals never build churches.

Yeah, that's right. When he preached through Jude, he said that. In fact, any of the listeners, I would really recommend MacArthur's book, Ashamed of the Gospel, is worth it just for the appendices at the back.

There's some great appendices on Charles Spurgeon and the downgrade controversy, and on Charles Finney, and I found it very instructive and helpful in understanding these things. And the importance of, actually, the biggest problem, I think, Mike, is not the false teachers per se, that will always be around, but preachers who are true gospel preachers, but they're a bit soft, they're not willing to really guard the gate.

And so what do we do as congregants? There are people listening today, and their favorite shows maybe are Charles Stanley's show, or Chuck Swindoll's show is on the station, and they're just, you know, they don't want to be bothered with silencing critics and studying different blog sites, and maybe they're a little down on discernment blogs.

What kind of advice do you have for simple men and women, laypeople is what I mean, in churches today? Should they even care about these issues, and to what extent?

Yes, we should care about them. I think we should, in a church, we should want to be under a shepherd who understands that shepherds do two things. Shepherds protect them from wolves. And so part of that is pointing out error.

Now, we might not be able to identify these things, but we should certainly at least try to find ourselves in a place where there is, we know that the church is under leadership that loves the flock enough to guard against these things creeping in.

Again, if you look historically, the decline of Puritanism, it declined in one generation, and it was largely because of faithful gospel preachers, but who turned a blind eye to false teaching going on around them, and even were not vigilant in who they allowed in their pulpit.

And don't we see that today, Mike?

Discernment, Church History, and Signs of a False Teacher

A couple more here from Cameron on the, you might be a false teacher if, and the answer to your question is yes. But some of these are so good, I've got a quick jump back to your blog post. You might be a false teacher if you think church history refers to the different phases of your building projects.

See, that is worthy of Steve Cooley on Tuesday, don't you think?

That's right, because, you know, Steve is...

All right, how about. Here's another one from Cameron. You might be a false teacher if you wear a suit when you're in the White House and a Hawaiian shirt when you're in the Lord's house.

It did not escape my attention at the inauguration. I'm not saying that you have to wear a suit when you go to church, but it is telling that Warren would wear a suit to the White House and a Hawaiian shirt at Saddleback.

Good observation. Maybe this is my favorite one, because you end on a positive note. This is a positive, encouraging Caleb moment, and I'll let you wax on this for a while, Cameron. You might be a false teacher if the promise of the forgiveness of sins found in Jesus Christ underwhelms you.

Yeah, well, I've seen... Mike, you might have noticed too, especially... I first noticed this among a lot of the emergents, that when talking about the gospel, when talking about the atonement, when talking about the forgiveness of sins, you would hear them say, is that all there is?

Is that all it is? And it really started to bother me. And in fact, I heard a debate between Al Mohler and Jim Wallace, and that was a subtext of the whole debate, both with questions and with Jim Wallace saying, is there more?

And something that was being missed in the whole debate, I think, was Jim Wallace was clearly not that impressed with the forgiveness of sins.

Well, it almost... it harkens back to Christ, the wisdom and power of God in 1 Corinthians 1, but other people, they just think it's foolishness, or they can just yawn, or they're not that impressed.

I think part of it is they have a bad view of me, and they do not understand their own wickedness, they do not understand the price that's needed to pay to purchase, and they are just not impressed. And it's really, of course, the hymn writer wrote, full atonement, possibly be, it's something that should just amaze us, that why would He save me?

Instead of asking, you know, how can a loving God send someone to hell, asking, why on earth would God save me? Why doesn't He damn me? Why doesn't God damn everyone to hell right now? Why does He delay His wrath?

Why does He give us time to repent?

Cameron’s Future Plans and Final Sign-Off

We're talking to Cameron Butell today, once upon a crossblogspot .com. There's a period in between cross and blogspot. Cameron, we've got about a minute left. Tell our listeners what you would love to do after you graduate seminary.

Do you have any plans? Are you going to go back to Europe, Australia, or what?

I don't know what will happen geographically, Mike, but my desire is both contending for the faith and defending the faith. That's the field I really desire to labor in. I would like to also write in a seminary-level evangelism curriculum.

That's like a big goal I have. I just think that to see people being very average churchgoers, very competent in sharing the gospel on the mission field, I've seen people arrive on the mission field who are not very good at it.

Well, when you graduate, the fields are certainly white for harvest, and, you know, isn't it great to realize that God's sovereign, and we have a desire given by God to preach the gospel and evangelize, and then He'll figure out a way to get us where we're supposed to be without liver shivers and Christian clairvoyance?

Amen, Mike. I wouldn't want to be an open theist for anything right now.

Yeah, that's right. Again, the blog spot is onceuponacross .blogspot .com, or you can go to grace2u, what is it, gty .org? Is that how we get there? Gty .org. That's right. And then is there any other website or anything you want to give me before I sign off?

Well, my website is onceuponacross .com.

Okay, I didn't know it was—okay, perfect. And we don't even need the blog spot in there. Cameron Butell, thanks so much for your ministry, for your encouragement, gospel-centeredness, and we appreciate you being on No Compromise Radio.

Mike, it was a lot of fun. Thanks for inviting me on.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible-teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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